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AMERICAN 
MEDITATIVE   LYRICS 


BY 

THEODORE  W.  HUNT,  Ph.  D.,  Litt.  D. 

PROFESSOR  OF   ENGLISH  IN   THE   COLLEGE  OF   NEW  JERSEY, 

AUTHOR  OF   "ENGLISH  PROSE   AND   PROSE  WRITERS,"  ETHICAL 

STUDIES  IN   OLD  ENGLISH    AUTHORS,   ETC. 


Jllnstratcb 


ft 


NEW  YORK 

E.  B.  TREAT,  5  Cooper  Union 

OFFICE  OF   THE   TREASURY  MAGAZINE 
1896 


Copyright,   1896,  by 
E.  B.  Treat. 


TO 

EDMUND    CLARENCE    STEDMAN 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

The  Spiritual  Element  in  Poetry 1 1 

William  Cullen  Bryant 21 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow 37 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 53 

Edgar  Allan  Poe 69 

John  Greenleaf  Whittier 85 

James  Russell  Lowell 103 

Bayard  Taylor 119 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 135 

Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe 151 

American  Memorial  Lyrics:  Elegies 167 

American  Deyotional  Lyrics:  Hymns  ....  183 

Some  Later  Lyrists 197 


PREFACE. 

As  indicated  by  the  title,  it  is  the  purpose  of 
this  volume  briefly  to  discuss  American  Lyrical 
Verse,  with  exclusive  reference  to  its  meditative 
quality  as  distinct  from  any  other  features  it 
may  present  in  the  line  of  a  more  objective 
and  secular  type  of  poetry.  Reference  will  be 
made  to  representative  poets  only — to  those 
only  whose  work  is  specifically  literary,  and 
mainly  to  authors  whose  poetic  product  has 
already  passed  into  literary  history.  No  at- 
tempt will  be  made  fully  to  compass  so  wide 
and  fruitful  a  field,  but  only  to  give  a  view  suf- 
ficiently comprehensive  to  meet  the  demands 
of  intelligent  readers,  and  stimulate  their  study 
along  similar  lines.  Naturally  adapted  as  a  topic 
to  the  needs  and  tastes  of  the  clergy  and  of 
those  who  are  specially  inclined  or  committed 
to  the  contemplative  life,  it  is  hoped  that  the 


treatise,  in  its  simple  method,  may  commend 
itself  to  all  those  who  are  seeking  in  the  poetry 
that  they  read  the  spontaneous  and  serious  ut- 
terances of  the  human  heart. 


T.  W.  H. 


Princeton,  N.  J., 
March,  1896. 


THE  SPIRITUAL  ELEMENT  IN 
POETRY. 


II 


CHAPTER    FIRST. 

THE    SPIRITUAL    ELEMENT    IN 
POETRY. 

A  QUESTION  of  interest  emerges  at  the  outset 
as  to  the  spiritual  element  in  poetry :  what  it  is 
in  its  essential  nature,  to  what  degree  it  manifests 
itself,  what  are  the  various  forms  of  its  manifes- 
tation, and  what  the  characteristics  and  salient 
features  which  it  gives  to  verse.  It  is  to  this 
particular  element  in  literature  that  Professor 
Corson  refers,  as  he  writes,  in  his  "  Introduction 
to  Browning,"  of  "  the  spiritual  ebb  and  flow 
of  verse,"  emphasizing  the  fact  that  it  appears 
and  recedes  with  something  like  the  regularity 
of  the  tides,  sometimes,  at  the  flood,  and,  some- 
times, at  the  lowest  ebb.  Matthew  Arnold  ac- 
knowledges the  presence  and  potency  of  this 
element,  as  he  speaks  of  the  Hebraic  order  of 
British  verse  as  contrasted  with  the  Hellenic. 
13 


1-i  AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Modern  critics  speak  of  a  school  of  English 
poetry  as  the  Oriental  or  scriptural,  in  the  light 
of  this  spiritual  feature,  "  from  which  source 
arises,"  says  Devey , ' '  that  earnestness  of  purpose, 
that  profound  reflection  and  purity  of  feeling, 
which  make  the  higher  order  of  English  poets 
stand  out  in  advantageous  contrast  to  the 
heathen  bards  of  antiquity."  To  the  same  effect, 
a  living  American  critic,  Mabie,  suggestively 
writes:  "The  spiritual  world  is  the  background 
of  almost  all  modern  poetry,  from  those  early 
songs  of  Longfellow,  which  have  become  the 
familiar  psalms  of  universal  experience,  to  such 
noble  interpretations  of  human  life  from  the 
spiritual  side  as  Tennyson's  '  In  Memoyiam,'  ' 
and,  by  way  of  special  reference  to  our  own 
verse,  he  adds  that  this  particular  characteristic 
has  been  illustrated,  with  one  or  two  exceptions, 
"  in  the  entire  company  of  American  poets." 
One  of  the  marked  exceptions  to  this  principle, 
the  poet  Whitman,  confirms  the  correctness  of 
the  statement  by  the  severe  character  of  the 
criticism  to  which,  by  way  of  contrast,  he  has 
voluntarily  subjected  himself. 

Even  though  at  times  this  unworldly  feature 
has  taken  an  unattractive  and  extreme  form,  in 


SPIRITUAL   ELEMENT  IN  POETRY.         15 

the  phase  of  a  Puritan  order  of  piety  and  life, 
its  essential  basis  of  spirituality  has  been  present 
to  give  solidity  and  tone  to  literary  art.  Be- 
cause of  the  fact,  moreover,  that  in  the  poetry 
of  Poe  we  have  an  expression  of  moral  charac- 
ter that  is  abnormal,  this  is  not  to  lead  us 
to  argue  against  the  healthy  presence  of  such 
a  quality.  What,  indeed,  could  more  fully  and 
accurately  portray  the  essential  presence  of 
spiritual  life,  midway  between  the  morbid  verse 
of  Poe  and  the  ultra-moralistic  verse  of  Tupper, 
than  such  sane  and  wholesome  and  meditative 
lines  as  we  find  in  the  instructive  pages  of  Bry- 
ant and  Emerson  and  Longfellow  and  Whit- 
tier!  Indeed,  we  go  not  beyond  the  truth  of 
the  matter  when  we  say  that  the  primal  func- 
tion of  verse,  as  distinct  from  prose,  is  to  reveal 
the  supersensual  to  men.  If  Arnold  is  right  in 
saying  that  "  the  grand  power  of  poetry  is  its 
interpretative  power,"  then  we  may  add  that  its 
main  office  as  interpretative  is  to  detect  and  dis- 
close the  spiritual  element  that  there  is  in  God 
and  nature  and  man  and  truth.  It  is  its  high 
office  to  make  the  "  vision  divine  "  visible  and 
real  to  men,  and  so  to  minimize  the  distance  be- 
tween earth  and  heaven  as  to  hallow  the  one  by 


16  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE  LYRICS. 

the  other.  Hence,  poetry  in  its  origin  is  more 
divine  than  human,  as  the  poets  of  old  were  poets 
and  priests  in  one,  composing  and  singing  what 
they  sang  as  the  prophets  of  God  for  the  holiest 
ends.  "  All  truth,"  says  one,  "  that  awakens 
within  us  the  feeling  of  the  infinite  is  poetic." 
Even  Byron  conceived  of  it  "  as  the  feeling  of 
past  worlds  and  future,"  while,  in  the  eye  of 
such  a  bard  as  Milton  or  Wordsworth  or  Mrs. 
Browning  or  Mrs.  Stowe,  it  never  descended 
below  the  level  of  a  specifically  spiritual  art.  If 
this  be  so  as  to  poetry  in  general,  what  may  not 
be  said  of  the  high  spiritual  purport  of  lyric 
poetry — the  utterance  of  the  heart  more  than 
of  the  head,  the  accepted  medium,  in  all  ages 
and  nations,  for  the  revelation  of  the  inner  soul 
of  man,  the  literary  Via  Sacra,  over  whose  high- 
way there  pass  the  purest  spirits  of  the  race  with 
their  messages  to  men!  In  this  view  of  it,  the 
meditative  lyric  at  its  best  is -but  another  name 
for  the  Christian  idyl,  such  a  collection  as  Mrs. 
Stowe's  "  Religious  Poems  "  representing  it  in 
its  normal  function.  In  this  view,  indeed,  Bry- 
ant and  Longfellow  and  Emerson,  in  their  high 
converse  with  truth  and  goodness  as  lyric  poets, 
stand  so  closely  next  t6  the  specifically  religious 


SPIRITUAL   ELEMENT  IN  POETRY.         17 

lyrists  of  our  literature,  to  Heber  and  Mont- 
gomery and  Toplady,  as  to  make  the  distinction 
almost  invalid,  and  include  our  best  reflective 
poems  within  the  sacred  circle  of  English  hym- 
nology.  How  delicate  the  difference,  after  all, 
as  to  their  essential  spirituality,  between  the 
historic  hymns  of  Hastings  and  Palmer  and  the 
deeply  religious  verse  of  Lowell  and  Longfel- 
low ;  between  "  The  Rock  of  Ages  "  and  "  The 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  or  "The  Cathedral"! 
Nor  need  this  spiritual  principle  be  expressed 
in  any  one  way  or  method,  but,  just  because  it 
is  spiritual,  it  is  as  varied  and  as  free  as  the  moral 
nature  of  man.  In  no  sphere  more  than  in  this 
does  the  personality  of  the  poet  reveal  itself,  it 
lying  within  his  own  choice  and  the  liberty  of 
his  own  literary  instincts  as  to  just  how  and  how 
fully  he  shall  disclose  this  innermost  quality  of 
himself  and  his  work.  Chaucer  expressed  it  in 
one  form,  in  the  life-like  sketches  of  "  The  Can- 
terbury Tales  "  ;  Spenser,  in  another  form,  in  his 
great  Protestant  semi-epic ;  Milton,  in  still  an- 
other; and  Wordsworth,  in  still  another.  JjpIupi 
Cowper  wrote  his  "Task"  and  other  secular 
poems  with  as  spiritual  an  intent  as  that  with 
which  he  wrote  his  hymns.     The  same  intensity 


18  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE  LYRICS. 

of  moral  earnestness  and  purpose  characterizes 
the  most  ordinary  work  of  Mrs.  Browning,  while 
the  spiritual  tone  of  Keats  and  Tennyson,  though 
just  as  really  present,  is  uttered  in  a  manner  all 
their  own.  So,  in  American  verse,  this  difference 
of  manifestation  is  apparent,  the  meditative  type 
of  Emerson  being  one  thing  and  that  of  Bryant 
another.  So,  do  such  poets  as  Lowell  and  Long- 
fellow differ,  as  do  Holmes  and  Whittier,  Bayard 
Taylor  and  Willis  and  Mrs.  Stowe  ;  each  of  them, 
however,  in  a  true  sense,  recognizing  the  un- 
worldly quality  in  verse  and  seeking  to  give  it 
some  adequate  embodiment.  No  attempts  in 
literature  have  been  more  unsuccessful  than 
those  that  have  sometimes  been  made  either  to 
ignore  or  to  pervert  this  deep-seated  instinct  in 
the  nature  of  man,  as  the  verse  of  Arnold  and 
Clough  and  Shelley  and  Wilde  and  Whitman 
will  attest.  Sensuous  verse  or  skeptical  verse  is 
as  untrue  to  the  natural  quality  and  aim  of  verse 
as  it  is  to  the  best  natural  instincts  of  man,  and 
only  results  in  begetting  in  the  souls  of  those 
who  subject  themselves  to  it  dissatisfaction  with 
themselves  and  the  world. 

A  final  word  is  in  place  to  this  effect :  that 
lyric  verse,  in  its  higher  reflective  and  spiritual 


SPIRITUAL   ELEMENT  IN  POETRY.         19 

forms,  affords  a  study  second  to  no  other  in  all 
that  pertains  to  purity  of  soul  and  the  quickening 
of  the  inner  and  better  life.  Its  special  function 
is  to  secure  to  the  reader  what  Longinus  has 
called  "  elevation  of  thought  and  feeling,"  lifting 
the  whole  being  for  the  time  outside  of  itself, 
its  trials  and  struggles  and  cares,  into  the  upper 
air  of  mental  and  moral  peace.  It  is  what  a 
modern  writer  has  called  "  this  interpenetration 
of  supernal  radiance  "  that  sets  the  soul  free, 
illumines  all  that  is  dark,  eliminates  all  that  is 
low  and  belittling,  and  opens  the  way  widely  to 
the  clearer  vision  of  God  and  truth.  It  is  the 
poetry  of  the  affections,  of  the  profoundest  in- 
stincts of  men,  of  human  hope  and  aspiration, 
of  those  "  breathings  from  the  depths  "  of  which 
De  Quincey  writes,  and  what  he  himself  so  pas- 
sionately and  vainly  struggled  to  embody  in 
human  language. 

"  Epic  verse  reaches  at  times  sublimer  heights 
of  mental  outlook,  and  dramatic  verse,  on  its 
tragic  side,  assays  a  bolder  and  more  impressive 
function ;  but  it  is  reserved  for  the  lyric,  in  a 
quieter  and  more  conservative  manner,  to  find 
its  way  into  the  most  interior  recesses  of  the 
heart  and  minister  to  our  most  urgent  spiritual 


20  AM  ERICA  X  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

needs."  To  the  clergy  and  the  laity,  to  the  special 
student  of  literature,  and  to  every  lover  of  good 
books,  this  spacious  and  inviting  field  is  open. 
It  will  be  an  auspicious  day  indeed  for  the  mod- 
ern world  when  such  an  order  of  literature  as 
this  is  appreciated  at  its  full  worth,  and  takes  its 
rightful  place  in  every  home  and  library  as  su- 
perior to  the  lower  and  more  transient  literature 
of  the  time. 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 


•2: 


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tjq4-i878. 


CHAPTER    SECOND. 

WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT. 

The  critics  are  still  busy  in  determining 
which  of  all  the  historic  and  accepted  divi- 
sions of  verse  may  be  said  to  be  the  greatest : 
whether  it  is  the  epic,  as  hitherto  generally 
held  ;  or  the  dramatic,  as  much  of  later  literary 
criticism  holds;  or  the  lyric,  which  has  never 
been  more  carefully  and  appreciatively  studied 
than  it  is  now,  and  has  never  so  stoutly  contested 
the  claims  of  supremacy  made  by  any  other 
poetic  form.  Be  this  as  it  may,  this  much  can 
safely  be  conceded,  that,  as  lyric  verse  is  the 
oldest  of  all  the  forms,  so  it  is  the  simplest,  ten- 
derest,  and  most  impressive  ;  appealing,  as  it  does, 
to  the  deepest  affections  and  sympathies  of  the 
human  heart,  its  joys  and  sorrows,  its  loves  and 
hates,  its  passions  and  aspirations,  its  hopes  and 
fears,  so  as  to  leave  no  part  of  the  complex  na- 
25 


26  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE  LYRICS. 

ture  of  man  unvisited  by  its  appeals.  The  rich 
variety  of  its  orders  or  classes  is  sufficient  to  re- 
veal the  spacious  scope  that  it  covers,  and  its 
wondrous  adaptability  to  all  the  phases  of  earthly 
experience.  In  ode  and  sonnet,  in  pastoral  and 
elegy,  in  song  and  idyl,  in  one  species  or  an- 
other, it  finds  a  fitting  medium  for  its  expres- 
sion, and  also  finds  a  ready  entrance  into  the 
most  guarded  recesses  of  the  spirit  of  man. 
The  epic  may  surpass  it  in  majesty  of  movement 
and  a  corresponding  dignity  and  grandeur  of 
effect,  and  the  dramatic  may  surpass  it,  on  its 
tragic  side,  in  a  sublime  seriousness  of  manner, 
or  a  bold  and  startling  revelation  of  human  sin 
and  struggle  ;  but  neither  of  them  is  comparable 
to  it  in  that  sweet  and  gracious  influence  it  ex- 
erts over  all  human  faculties  and  feelings,  in  that 
subdued  and  softening  impressiveness  of  which 
the  restless  spirit  of  humanity  is,  in  such  urgent 
need.  It  is  in  this  special  province  of  lyric  verse 
that  our  American  literature  finds  its  most  at- 
tractive and  fruitful  field,  so  that  it  would  be 
difficult  to  collect  a  richer  anthology  of  the 
idyllic  order  than  that  given  us  in  any  well-se- 
lected Lyrica  Americana,  while  it  is  from  this 
side  of  verse,  most  of  all,  that  the  compass  and 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  27 

excellence  of  our  poetic  product  are  to  be  judged. 
Beginning  as  far  back  as  the  days  of  Freneau 
and  Rodman  Drake,  it  unfolds  itself  in  the 
pages  of  Poe  and  Halleck  and  Bryant  and 
Willis,  on  through  the  rich  succession  of  our 
leading  lyrists  in  the  persons  of  Emerson  and 
Longfellow,  Whittier  and  Lowell,  and  the  mod- 
ern school  of  Lanier  and  Aldrich  and  Carleton 
and  Stedman,  which  later  bards,  it  may  be  said 
without  hesitation,  have  been  singing  in  as 
strong  and  as  sweet  a  key  as  did  their  great 
historic  forerunners  in  the  golden  age  of  our 
native  verse.  Especially  in  the  line  of  the  de- 
scriptive and  delineative  has  this  poetic  work 
been  of  pronounced  excellence, whether  as  repre- 
senting the  world  of  physical  phenomena,  in  all 
its  variety  of  light  and  shade,  of  valley,  stream, 
and  mountain,  or  the  vastly  wider  world  of 
mental  and  spiritual  phenomena,  in  its  endless 
diversity  of  thought  and  character  and  life. 

Of  all  the  historic  forms  which  such  a  deline- 
ation of  human  experience  has  assumed  in  lyric 
verse,  none  is  more  characteristically  American 
or  more  impressive  in  its  effects  than  what  we 
have  termed  the  meditative,  known  at  times  as 
didactic  or  ethical  verse,  as  seen  in  the  poems 


28  AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

of  Wordsworth  or  Cowper.  Its  conspicuous 
quality  is  its  reflective  tone  and  temper,  that 
quiet  and  pensive  order  of  verse  which  arises 
from  the  poet's  undisturbed  communings  on 
God  and  man  and  human  life  and  destiny,  and 
appeals  directly  and  profoundly  to  the  most 
intense  experience  of  the  reader.  It  would  not 
be  amiss  to  call  it  subjective  or  introspective 
verse,  dealing  with  conscience  and  the  moral 
nature  of  man;  and  in  this  view  of  it,  as  spe- 
cifically homiletic  in  its  type,  it  comes  with  sin- 
gular aptness  and  force  to  those  engaged  in  the 
study  and  diffusion  of  truth.  We  know  of  no 
species  of  poetry  more  germane  to  devout  and 
thoughtful  minds  than  this,  surcharged,  as  it  is, 
with  moral  meaning,  and  evoking,  as  it  is  read, 
all  the  deepest  ethical  impulses  of  the  soul. 
Passing  over,  not  infrequently,  from  the  region 
of  the  merely  meditative  into  the  richer  region 
of  the  spiritual,  it  assumes  the  character  of  sa- 
cred and  devotional  song,  and  lies  closely  next 
to  the  specifically  inspired  verse  of  Scripture. 
Much  of  the  hymnology  of  the  Christian 
church  is  but  a  higher  form  of  it,  while,  in  its  most 
unspiritual  expressions,  it  appeals  directly  to  the 
soul's  purest  sensibilities.      How  often  might  the 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  29 

monotony  of  the  sermon  be  relieved  by  an  apt 
quotation  from  the  lyric  lines  of  Longfellow  or 
Lowell!  How  often,  indeed,  might  a  biblical 
teaching  be  enforced  or  a  homiletic  hint  be  fast- 
ened by  such  a  reference  to  the  reflective  Eng- 
lish and  American  poets!  Moreover,  what  a 
gracious  and  chastening  effect  would  an  experi- 
mental acquaintance  with  such  poetry  have  on 
the  distinctly  intellectual  life  of  the  preacher 
and  teacher  of  truth,  as  it  exalts  the  spiritual 
over  the  mental,  the  utterances  of  the  heart 
over  the  language  of  the  schools,  and,  for  the 
time  being,  makes  one  forget  that  he  is  not  so 
much  a  sermonizer  or  a  student  as  he  is  a  man 
among  men,  a  lover  of  goodness  and  of  beauty, 
an  interpreter  of  human  experience  to  his  fel- 
low-men! Here  and  there,  a  line  from  so  lov- 
able and  thoughtful  a  bard  as  Whittier  would 
so  point  a  moral  as  to  make  its  impression  deep 
and  permanent. 

With  these  thoughts  in  mind,  we  turn  instinc- 
tively to  Bryant,  our  earliest  notable  poet  in  the 
province  of  the  meditative,  and,  in  some  re- 
spects, not  surpassed  by  any  later  name.  What- 
ever may  be  the  classification  of  his  poems  on 


30  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

which  different  critics,  from  various  points  of 
view,  insist,  this  reflective  feature  is  discernible. 
Wittingly  or  unwittingly,  he  never  allows  us  to 
forget  it;  while,  if  we  look  carefully  between 
the  lines,  we  find  him  saying  that  this  is,  after 
all,  the  dominant  purpose  of  his  verse  and  of  all 
true  verse.  In  what  may  be  termed  his  Hebraic 
poems,  such  as  "  Rizpah  "  and  "  The  Song  of 
the  Stars,"  this  quality  is  controlling;  so,  in  his 
North  American  poems,  as  in  "  The  Indian 
Girl's  Lament."  Even  in  his  national  verse, 
such  as  "  Our  Country's  Call  "  and  "  The  Death 
of  Lincoln,"  the  tone  is  of  this  thoughtful  order, 
as,  also,  in  his  "  Translations  "  from  the  various 
European  tongues  there  is  the  evident  presence 
of  the  meditative.  No  theme  can  be  so  secular 
that  he  will  not,  ere  he  closes,  remind  us  that  it 
has  a  moral  purport,  and  should  be  so  presented 
and  received.  This  is  significantly  shown  in  the 
manner  in  which  he  develops  subjects  taken  from 
the  external  world  of  organic  and  inorganic  na- 
ture, so  that  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that 
these  physical  topics  are  as  full  of  the  higher 
teaching  and  spirit  as  those  that  are  distinctively 
reflective. 

How  clearly  this  is  seen  in  "  Thanatopsis," 


WILLIAM   CULLEN  BRYANT.  31 

his  first  great  poem — a  poem  in  which  the 
earthly  and  the  unearthly  are  so  conjoined  and 
fused  that  no  dividing  line  can  be  discerned ! 
Our  love  of  nature  is  to  express  itself  in  "  com- 
munion with  her  visible  forms  "  ;  the  voice  to 
which  we  are  summoned  to  listen  is  "  a  still 
voice,"  and  the  natural  world  is  used  through- 
out the  poem  but  as  a  symbol  by  which  the 
great  realities  of  the  supernatural  world  are  set 
before  us  and  impressed  upon  us. 

From  those  poems  of  a  general  descriptive 
character  that  have  for  their  purpose  the  por- 
trayal of  natural  life  and  scenery,  and  also  in- 
volve this  meditative  element,  the  discerning 
reader  can  scarcely  choose  amiss.  Thus,  in 
"  Autumn  Woods,"  he  sings,  after  describing 
the  purely  physical  beauties  of  the  trees : 

11  Ah!  'twere  a  lot  too  blest 

Forever  in  thy  colored  shades  to  stray ; 
Amid  the  kisses  of  the  soft  southwest 

To  rove  and  dream  for  aye ; 
And  leave  the  vain  low  strife 

That  makes  men  mad — the  tug  for  wealth  and  power, 
The  passions  and  the  cares  that  wither  life, 

And  waste  its  little  hour." 

So  in  "A  Forest  Hymn,"  with  its  rare  combination 
of  epic  majesty  and  lyric  tenderness,  as  he  sings  : 


32  AMERICA X  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

"  Father,  Thy  hand 
Hath  reared  these  venerable  columns,  Thou 
Didst  weave  this  verdant  roof.     Thou  didst  look  down 
Upon  the  naked  earth,  and,  forthwith,  rose 
All  these  fair  ranks  of  trees.    .    .   . 
My  heart  is  awed  within  me  when  I  think 
Of  the  great  miracle  that  still  goes  on 
In  silence  round  me — the  perpetual  work 
Of  Thy  creation,  finished,  yet  renewed 
Forever.    .   .    . 

Be  it  ours  to  meditate 
In  these  calm  shades,  Thy  milder  majesty. 
And  to  the  beautiful  order  of  Thy  works 
Learn  to  conform  the  order  of  our  lives." 

Bryant  seemed  to  be  especially  happy  and 
at  home  in  the  composition  of  these  forest 
hymns,  in  that  they  brought  him  face  to  face 
with  nature,  stirred  within  him  all  the  finer 
feelings  of  the  heart,  and  enabled  him  to  wor- 
ship God  directly,  without  the  intervention  of 
priest  or  ritual.  He  thoroughly  believed  that 
"the  groves  were  God's  first  temples."  So,  in 
such  nature-poems  as  "The  Evening  Wind," 
"  The  Snow-shower,"  "  The  Song  of  the  Sower," 
"  The  Return  of  the  Birds,"  and  "  June."  We 
have  sometimes  thought  that  we  look  in  vain 
in  English  and  American  lyrics  for  anything 
richer  in  the  line  of  reflective  song  than  that 
which  we  find  in  "June"  as  it  opens. 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  33 

''  I  gazed  upon  the  glorious  sky 

And  the  green  mountains  round, 
And  thought  that  when  I  came  to  lie 

At  rest  within  the  ground, 
'Twere  pleasant  that  in  flowery  June, 
When  brooks  send  up  a  cheerful  tune, 

And  groves  a  joyous  sound, 
The  sexton's  hand,  my  grave  to  make, 
The  rich,  green  mountain-turf  should  break. 

'And  what  if  cheerful  shouts  at  noon 

Come,  from  the  village  sent, 
Or  song  of  maids,  beneath  the  moon, 

With  fairy  laughter  blent? 
And  what  if,  in  the  evening  light, 
Betrothed  lovers  walk  in  sight 

Of  my  low  monument? 
I  would  the  lovely  scene  around 
Might  know  no  sadder  sight  nor  sound. 

"  I  know  that  I  no  more  should  see 

The  season's  glorious  show, 
Nor  would  its  brightness  shine  for  me, 

Nor  its  wild  music  flow  ; 
But  if  around  my  place  of  sleep 
The  friends  I  love  should  come  to  weep, 

They  might  not  haste  to  go. 
Soft  airs,  and  song,  and  light,  and  bloom, 
Should  keep  them  lingering  by  my  tomb." 

All  this  is  simply  matchless  as  an  expression 
of  idyllic  tenderness,  rich  poetic  melody,  and 
impressive  ethical  teaching,  so  that  we  wonder 


34  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

whether  Bryant  can  be  any  more  meditative  and 
suggestive  when  he  leaves  the  province  of  ma- 
terial nature  for  the  distinctive  province  of 
moral  teaching,  as  seen  in  such  poems  as  "  The 
Ages,"  "  The  Future  Life,"  "  An  Evening  Rev- 
erie," and  "  The  Flood  of  Years."  Thus,  in 
"  The  Crowded  Street,"  after  describing  the 
restless  movement  to  and  fro  that  one  can  daily 
see  in  a  thronged  thoroughfare,  he  closes  with 
the  lines : 

"  Each  where  his  tasks  or  pleasures  call, 
They  pass  and  heed  each  other  not. 
There  is  who  heeds,  who  holds  them  all, 
In  His  large  love  and  boundless  thought. 

"  These  struggling  tides  of  life,  that  seem 
In  wayward,  aimless  course  to  tend, 
Are  eddies  of  the  mighty  stream, 
That  rolls  to  its  appointed  end." 

Whatever  the  topic,  method,  meter,  or  spe- 
cific purpose,  Bryant  thus  insists  that  poetry  fails 
of  its  greatest  mission  if,  with  all  its  literary  cor- 
rectness and  spirit,  it  does  not  succeed  in  en- 
nobling the  moral  nature  of  man.  How  emi- 
nently wholesome  and  tonic,  therefore,  is  all  this 
verse,  lifting  the  soul  of  the  reader  to  the  higher 
levels,  where  the  air  is  clearer  and  the  outlook 


WILLIAM   CULL  EX  BRYANT.  35 

wider;  repressing  every  unhallowed  thought 
and  desire ;  keeping  him  in  line  with  all  that  is 
best ;  and  especially  needed  in  these  latter  days, 
when  poets  and  prose  writers  alike  deem  it  far 
too  often  a  sign  of  literary  weakness  to  exalt  the 
spiritual  in  art,  and  much  prefer  to  cross  the  line 
over  into  the  region  of  the  animal  and  fleshly ! 
Bryant  and  Whitman !  What  a  contrast  here 
we  have  between  the  realism  of  the  soul  and  the 
realism  of  the  senses ;  between  lyric  piety  and 
lyric  coarseness;  between  "  Thanatopsis  "  and 
"  Leaves  of  Grass." 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


J<l«A~*yV< .  ^—^ 


«JJ^s~uJ> 


TS07-18S2. 


CHAPTER    THIRD. 

HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 

If  we  were  to  judge  from  a  poet's  ancestry 
and  general  antecedents  what  the  character  of 
his  poetry  ought  to  be,  we  should  certainly  say 
as  to  Longfellow  that  it  should  be  eminently 
thoughtful  and  instructive  ;  good  poetry,  in  every 
sense  of  the  word ;  the  spontaneous  expression 
of  a  good  man  with  but  one  governing  purpose 
in  his  verse — the  doing  good  in  the  world  in 
which  Providence  had  placed  him.  His  sturdy 
Puritan  and  Pilgrim  lineage  guaranteed  this; 
the  old  Yorkshire  stock  to  which  he  belonged 
in  the  line  of  John  Alden  and  Priscilla  Mullens 
guaranteed  it ;  the  mental  and  moral  dower  he 
received  through  his  father,  Stephen,  and  his 
mother,  Zilpah  Wadsworth,  guaranteed  it ;  the 
beautiful  environment  of  his  early  days  in  the 
old-fashioned  ai\d  cultured  city  of  Portland,  the 

41 


4=2  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

"  dear  old  town  "  of  his  childhood,  guaranteed 
it ;  while  it  may  be  said  that  there  seemed  to 
be  in  his  experience  that  combination  of  nature 
and  grace,  of  human  and  divine  approval,  of  in- 
herited blessing  and  acquired  blessing,  that  set 
all  the  currents  of  his  being  from  the  first  stead- 
ily toward  what  was  best,  and  made  it  impos- 
sible for  him  to  be  any  other  than  he  was — one 
of  the  cleanest,  sweetest  characters  and  sons  of 
song  that  any  literature  possesses.  That  when 
a  mere  lad  in  his  teens  such  a  poet  as  the  de- 
vout Cowper  interested  him,  and  such  a  prose 
writer  as  the  gentle  Irving  was  a  formative  in- 
fluence in  his  life,  we  are  not  at  all  surprised  to 
learn  ;  nor  surprised  further  to  learn  that,  though 
a  free-hearted,  genuine  New  England  boy,  fond 
of  boyish  sports  and  full  of  boyish  ambitions, 
he  was  also  fond  of  turning  aside,  not  infre- 
quently, from  the  playground  to  the  library, 
from  frolicking  to  musing,  and  early  caught  an 
inspiring  vision  of  the  great  future  that  was 
awaiting  him.  It  is  thus  that  in  his  charming 
reflective  and  retrospective  poem,  "  My  Lost 
Youth,"  written  in  middle  manhood,  he  recalls 
those  secret  musings  in  which  he  indulged  as  a 
child  at  school : 


HE  A  rR  V   11  'A  DS 1 1  r0R  1 II  L  OA  TGFEL  LOW.        43 

"  I  remember  the  gleams  and  glooms  that  dart 

Across  the  school-boy's  brain; 
The  song  and  the  silence  in  the  heart, 
That  in  part  are  prophecies,  and  in  part 

Are  longings  wild  and  vain. 
And  the  voice  of  that  fitful  song 

Sings  on,  and  is  never  still ; 

'  A  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 
And  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long,  long  thoughts.'  " 

It  was  in  these  "  long,  long  thoughts"  that 
he  indulged,  half  in  boyish  reverie  and  half  in 
serious  purpose,  wondering  even  then  at  these 
"  prophecies  "  of  youth,  these  "  longings  "  of 
his  soul  for  a  something  far  beyond,  into  the 
gradual  revelation  and  realization  of  which  a 
gracious  destiny  was  yet  to  lead  him.  All  this 
was  singularly  characteristic  in  its  essential 
gravity  of  manner  and  outlook,  and  naturally 
deepened  in  its  impressiveness  in  his  college 
days  at  Bowdoin,  when  he  and  Hawthorne, 
that  introspective  boy,  walked  together  through 
the  streets  of  quaint  old  Brunswick  and  out  into 
the  open  country,  talking  of  college  life  and 
youthful  aspirations,  and  wondering  what  the 
larger  life  of  the  great  world  without  was  to 
bring  them,  and  what,  perchance,  they  in  turn 
were  to  bring  to  it.      "  If  this  institution,"  says 


44  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Hawthorne,  in  his  novel  "  Fanshawe,"  ''  did  not 
offer  all  the  advantages  of  elder  and  prouder 
seminaries,  its  deficiencies  were  compensated  to 
its  students  by  the  inculcation  of  regular  habits 
and  of  a  deep  and  awful  sense  of  religion,  which 
seldom  deserted  them  in  life."  It  was  this  deep 
religious  sense  that  lay  at  the  basis  of  Long- 
fellow's nature  and  found  a  discreet  expression 
in  all  the  phases  of  his  later  work.  In  such  a 
prose  work  as  "  Outre-Mer,"  light  and  descrip- 
tive as  it  is,  we  are  not  surprised  to  note  such 
papers  as  "  Pere  La  Chaise,"  "  The  Baptism  of 
Fire,"  and  "  The  Devotional  Poetry  of  Spain  "  ; 
as  in  his  romance  "  Hyperion,"  he  writes  of 
"  The  Christ  of  Andernach,"  "  Curfew  Bells," 
"  Shadows  on  the  Wall,"  and  "  The  Footprints 
of  Angels."  In  the  charming  tale  "  Kavanagh  " 
there  is  a  rich  vein  of  suggestive  teaching  run- 
ning through  it  all,  as  when  he  says  of  morality, 
that  "  without  religion  it  is  only  a  kind  of  dead 
reckoning — an  endeavor  to  find  our  place  on  a 
cloudy  sea  by  measuring  the  distance  we  have 
run,  but  without  any  observation  of  the  heav- 
enly bodies." 

It     is,    however,     when    this    sober-minded 
author  enters  fairly  on  his  great  poetic  career 


HENRY   WADSWORTH  LOXGFELLOW.        45 

that  he  may  be  said  to  find  himself  and  find 
his  readers,  as  through  the  avenue  of  lyric  and 
descriptive  verse  he  unbosoms  his  soul  to  us  as 
it  meditates  on  God  and  man  and  human  life 
and  destiny.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  all  his 
lyric  verse  might  fitly  come  under  the  title  of 
one  of  his  earliest  and  most  notable  poems, 
"  A  Psalm  of  Life,"  as  it  makes  reality  and 
earnestness  the  great  factors  of  character  and 
guiding  principles  of  action.  From  his  first  col- 
lection of  poems,  "The  Voices  of  the  Night," 
in  1839,  to  his  last  collection,  "  In  the  Harbor," 
in  1882,  the  year  of  his  death,  this  meditative 
feature  is  always  present,  and,  often,  prominent, 
and  ever  seen  connected  with  a  genial,  cheerful, 
hopeful  view  of  life  and  duty  and  human  history. 
Not  the  faintest  trace  do  we  find  here  of  the 
morbid  and  morose,  as  in  the  school  of  Arnold 
and  Clough  and  Swinburne  and  Poe ;  nothing 
of  the  pessimistic  wail  of  the  disappointed  world- 
ling, as  in  the  school  of  Byron ;  no  unhallowed 
commingling  of  the  sensual  and  the  supersen- 
sual,  as  in  the  poetry  of  Shelley  and  Whitman  ; 
and  no  merely  pedantic  attempt,  in  his  most 
serious  utterances,  to  lose  the  poet  in  the 
preacher,  or,  at  all  hazards,   to  point  a  moral, 


46  AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

after  the  manner  of  Martin  Tupper,  or  that 
of  Pollock,  in  "The  Course  of  Time."  The 
"Night  Thoughts  "  of  Edward  Young  may  de- 
serve the  stinging  sarcasm  of  Voltaire  for  their 
enforced  exhortations  to  duty,  but  not  so  "  The 
Voices  of  the  Night  "  by  Longfellow.  Even 
Bryant,  in  his  best  poetic  work,  failed,  at  times,  in 
this  respect,  where  his  more  gifted  contemporary 
never  failed,  nor  is  there  an  author  in  American 
letters,  if,  indeed,  in  British,  who  has  written  so 
much  and  so  ably  within  the  sphere  of  purely 
meditative  verse,  and  so  succeeded  in  keeping 
wholly  this  side  the  line  of  the  merely  moralistic, 
and  within  the  safer  and  more  attractive  province 
of  poetry.  All  the  more,  however,  has  he  suc- 
ceeded in  stamping  upon  our  native  verse  a 
meditative  impress,  from  which  it  cannot  and 
would  not  divert  itself  in  any  later  poetic  era. 
Whatever  classification  may  be  made  of  Long- 
fellow's poems,  as  descriptive,  dramatic,  and 
lyric,  it  is  the  lyric  order  that  is  the  most  com- 
mon, most  pronounced,  most  in  keeping  with  the 
poet's  genius  and  taste,  and  most  appreciated  by 
all  those  who  have  at  heart  the  permanent  suc- 
cess of  the  author.  Some  of  these  lyrics  take  a 
national  form,  as  his  tribute  to  "  President  Gar- 


ffEXKY  WADSU'ORTII  LOXGFELLOW.        47 

field " ;  some,  the  legendary  form,  as,  "  The 
Burial  of  the  Minnesink"  \  some,  the  form  of 
the  ballad  and  sonnet,  as  the  lines  to  Dante 
and  Keats ;  while  by  far  the  most  frequent  and 
satisfactory  expression  of  these  idyllic  verses  is 
in  the  line  of  the  meditative  and  moral.  Here 
he  was  himself,  thoroughly  at  home,  and  made 
his  readers  at  once  at  home  with  him.  We  may 
thus  turn  over  the  leaves  of  his  poetry  almost  at 
random  to  find  fitting  illustration  of  the  fertility 
of  his  genius  in  the  expression  of  human  senti- 
ment. Thus,  in  that  beautiful  lyric,  "  Footsteps 
of  Angels,"  beginning: 

"  When  the  hours  of  day  are  numbered, 
And  the  voices  of  the  night 
Wake  the  better  soul,  that  slumbered, 
To  a  holy,  calm  delight ;  " 

and  ending  with  equal  tenderness : 

"  Oh,  though  oft  depressed  and  lonely, 
All  my  fears  are  laid  aside 
If  I  but  remember  only 

Such  as  these  have  lived  and  died.'' 

So,  in  such  selections  as  "  The  Reaper  and  the 
Flowers,"  "  God's-Acre,"  "The  Rainy  Day," 
"  The  Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs,"  "  The  Psalm  of 


48  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE  LYRICS. 

Life,"    and    "Resignation,"    with    its    familiar 
opening : 

"  There  is  no  flock,  however  watched  and  tended, 
But  one  dead  lamb  is  there ; 
There  is  no  fireside,  howsoe'er  defended, 
But  has  one  vacant  chair." 

Even  in  his  translations  this  governing  pur- 
pose is  visible,  as  in  "  The  Children  of  the  Lord's 
Supper"  and  "The  Good  Shepherd."  So,  outside 
the  province  of  the  lyric  proper,  he  is  the  same 
contemplative  bard,  musing  over  the  great  prob- 
lems of  the  soul  of  man,  as  in  "  Evangeline  "  and 
"  Hiawatha."  In  his  dramatic  trilogy  "  Chris- 
tus,"  including  "  The  Golden  Legend,"  "  The 
Divine  Tragedy,"  and  "  New  England  Trage- 
dies," this  profound  passion  of  his  heart  is 
everywhere  apparent ;  so  that,  after  all,  the  lyric 
governs  the  dramatic,  and  reveals  the  true  direc- 
tion of  the  poet's  powers.  His  affectionate  at- 
titude toward  children,  and  his  lines  written  on 
their  behalf,  serve  but  to  indicate  still  more  fully 
this  sensitive  element  in  his  nature  and  the  "  soul 
of  goodness  "  that  was  in  him,  so  that  he  is 
claimed  by  the  young  as  by  the  old,  evincing  the 
fact  that  he  succeeded  in  impressing  all  classes 
without  passing  to  the  extreme  either  of  frivolity 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LOXG FELLOW.       49 

or  moroseness.  It  is  not  strange,  indeed,  that 
the  poet  has  somewhat  suffered  here  at  the  hands 
of  the  cynic  and  the  ultra-critical,  charged,  as  he 
has  been,  with  being  moralistic  and  edifying  to 
a  fault.  It  may  be  so,  and  yet  who  of  us  would 
eliminate  it  from  his  verse,  or  modify  in  one  iota 
the  primary  purpose  of  his  poetry !  Moreover, 
so  sweet  and  gracious  was  his  personality  that 
what  in  others  would  have  been  resented  by  the 
reader  as  "  church-steeple  "  exhortation  is  re- 
ceived at  his  hands  with  gratitude.  With  him, 
as  with  Whittier,  against  whom  the  same  accusa- 
tion has  been  spoken,  there  was  no  sharp  dis- 
tinction between  secular  and  sacred  verse.  All 
verse  was  sacred,  and  the  writing  of  it  was  ac- 
cepted as  a  moral  trust,  so  that  "  The  Belfry  at 
Bruges,"  "  Nuremburg,"  "  The  Building  of  the 
Ship,"  and  "  Christmas  Bells"  were  as  instinct 
with  sacred  purpose  as  were  "  The  Two  An- 
gels "  and  "  The  Ladder  of  St.  Augustine."  To 
think  of  Longfellow  writing  verse  or  prose  as 
Byron  wrote  it,  or  to  write  it  for  any  other  pur- 
pose than  thereby  to  do  good  and  cheer  the  lives 
of  good  men,  is  quite  out  of  the  question,  even 
if  in  so  doing  he,  at  times,  provoked  adverse  criti- 
cism, and,  at  times,  sacrificed  intellectual  vigor  to 


50  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

the  sway  of  human  sentiment.  As  he  says  in 
"  Kavanagh,"  "  In  character,  in  manner,  in  style, 
in  all  things,  the  supreme  excellence  is  simpli- 
city ;  "  and  he  adds,  "  Many  people  judge  of  the 
power  of  a  book  by  the  shock  it  gives  their  feel- 
ings." How  characteristically  absent  from  the 
verse  before  us  is  anything  that  would  shock 
the  most  delicate  nature !  How  true  it  is  to  all 
the  best  and  deepest  instincts  of  the  soul ;  and 
as  the  lines  run  on  in  their  even,  quiet  way,  what 
hope  and  comfort  they  bring,  what  calm  to 
the  troubled  spirits,  what  encouragement  to  the 
despondent,  as  the  reader  feels  for  the  time  that 
he  is  communing  with  a  friend  rather  than  pe- 
rusing the  literary  product  of  an  author!  Such 
verse  as  this,  we  have  said,  is  eminently  adapted 
to  the  clergy  in  their  contemplative  life  and 
spiritual  work,  and  eminently  adapted,  we  may 
add,  to  what  Mr.  Bryce  has  called  this  "  Age  of 
Discontent,"  this  restless,  overbusy,  bustling,  and 
blustering  age,  looking  on  every  hand  for  excit- 
ing scenes  and  events,  rating  men  and  measures 
according  to  the  stir  that  they  awaken,  and  pro- 
testing in  emphatic  words  against  the  dull  com- 
monplace of  modern  civilization.  What,  we  may 
seriously  inquire,  is  to  become  of  us,  if  these 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW.       51 

newsmongers  and  curiosity-seekers  are  to  have 
their  way  and  set  the  form  of  modern  life! 
What,  especially,  is  to  issue  in  literature,  and, 
most  of  all,  in  verse,  if  this  din  of  the  market- 
place is  to  prevail,  and  the  value  of  poetry  be 
based  on  its  efficacy  in  ministering  to  this  insatia- 
ble spirit  of  unrest !  It  wras  precisely  against  this 
growing  tendency  that  Emerson  so  courageously 
spoke  and  wrote  as  he  contended  for  the  domi- 
nance of  "  spiritual  laws  "  in  every  sphere  of 
human  effort.  So  did  Longfellow  live  and  write 
"  in  the  still  air  of  delightful  studies,"  and  so  does 
the  study  of  his  verse  soften  and  subdue  our 
peaceless  spirits. 

There  is  such  a  thing  as  restful  reading,  and 
the  poetry  before  us  is  a  notable  example,  as  is 
all  that  verse  which  is  prevailingly  meditative. 
Such  an  order  of  reading  is  more  than  restful. 
It  purifies  as  well  as  pacifies  the  mental  and 
moral  nature,  awakens  within  the  soul  all  the 
holier  affections  and  impulses,  brings  it  into  sym- 
pathetic relation  with  all  that  is  best  in  life  and 
song,  and  for  a  while,  at  least,  uplifts  us 

"  Above  the  smoke  and  stir  of  this  dim  spot, 
Which  men  call  Earth." 


RALPH    WALDO   EMERSON. 


53 


jKyti/a£&>  <£™^fe*~ 


1803-1882. 


CHAPTER    FOURTH. 

RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON. 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  is.thought  of,  per- 
haps, by  the  great  majority  of  American  readers 
and  literary  students,  as  a  writer  whose  work  is 
confined  to  the  sphere  of  prose  miscellany,  the 
author  of  profound  papers  on  Plato  and  Shake- 
speare, and  such  abstract  topics  as  ability,  origin- 
ality, and  greatness.  His  most  important  work, 
it  is  true,  is  in  prose,  though  no  reader  can  be 
said  to  know  Emerson  fully  who  is  not  familiar 
with  that  limited  but  characteristic  contribution 
that  he  has  made  to  the  volume  of  our  native 
verse,  such  a  contribution  being  especially  inter- 
esting in  that  his  prose  and  verse  were  at  length 
so  mutually  interactive.  In  no  particular  was 
this  influence  of  the  one  upon  the  other  more 
marked  than  along  those  meditative  lines  that 
we  are  now  following.  Critics  have  emphasized 
57 


58  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

correctly  the  contemplative  type  of  Emerson's 
essays  and  of  his  prose  style  in  general.  The 
themes  that  he  treats  are  sufficient  evidence  of 
this,  as  seen  in  "  Spiritual  Laws,"  "  Character," 
"Inspiration,"  "Religion,"  "Worship,"  and 
"  Immortality,"  while  subjects  the  most  secular 
and  practical  are  approached  and  discussed  in 
the  same  sobriety  of  spirit  and  with  the  same 
high  intent.  His  clerical  ancestry  back  through 
successive  generations  was  a  partial  explanation 
of  this.  His  study  of  theology,  his  ordination  to 
the  ministry,  and  his  active  experience  in  min- 
isterial work,  go  far  to  explain  it ;  while,  quite 
apart  from  such  antecedents  and  personal  duties, 
he  was  constitutionally  and  profoundly  medita- 
tive as  a  man  and  as  an  author,  pre-inclined  to 
the  subjective  and  cogitative.  His  philosophy 
was  introspective,  his  style  and  teaching  were 
introspective,  so  that  when  he  sat  down  to  the 
composition  of  verse  it  would  have  been  unnat- 
ural for  him  to  have  written  anything  other  than 
reflective  verse. 

Critics  have  classified  his  poems  as  descrip- 
tive, national,  and  autobiographic.  The  fact  is 
that,  from  first  to  last,  they  are  meditative — sim- 
ply the  way  in  which  the  thoughtful  Emerson 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON.  59 

expressed  his  musings  through  the  medium  of 
metrical  language,  whether  the  topic  be  in  itself 
reflective,  as  "  The  Problem  "  or  "  Destiny,"  or 
whether  in  its  character  far  removed  from  that, 
as  "  My  Garden  "  or  "  The  Song  of  Nature." 

The  celebrated  Greek  critic,  Longinus,  sums 
up  all  the  essential  elements  of  poetry  and  art 
in  the  one  word  "  sublimity,"  or,  as  he  interprets 
it  etymologically,  elevation  of  idea,  feeling,  and 
expression.  No  one  word  could  better  set  forth 
the  Emersonian  spirit  and  purpose,  insomuch 
that  all  his  mental  and  moral  activities  met  and 
were  fused  in  this  one  generic  principle.  In  the 
best  sense  of  the  term,  his  poetry  was  dignified, 
lifted  high  above  all  that  was  base  and  belittling, 
and  ever  looking  higher,  if  so  be  it  might  see  the 
face  of  God.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  his  phi- 
losophy has  been  called  transcendental.  His 
poetry  was  such,  even  to  the  extent  of  being 
Platonic,  and,  at  times,  mystic.  No  man  or  au- 
thor was  to  him  representative  or  worth  the  at- 
tention of  the  reader  in  whom  this  supernal  qual- 
ity was  not  more  or  less  distinctive,  as  he  saw 
it  in  Goethe  and  Shakespeare  and  Plato.  In 
discussing  what  he  calls  "  The  Uses  of  '  Great 
Men,'  "  he  finds  these  "  uses  "  beneficial  to  the 


60  AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

race  just  to  the  degree  in  which  they  raise  the 
eyes  of  men  from  earth  to  heaven,  and  induce 
a  reverent  contemplation  of  the  truth.  One  of 
the  explanations  of  Emerson's  occasional  ob- 
scurity both  in  prose  and  verse  is  found  in  the 
fact  that  his  thoughts  were  too  elevated  for 
verbal  embodiment,  in  accordance  with  Kant's 
definition  of  sublimity,  "  the  attempt  to  express 
the  infinite  in  the  finite."  His  conception  of  the 
nature  and  office  of  poetry  was  of  this  supersen- 
sual,  extramundane  order.  Thus,  in  his  "Frag- 
ments on  the  Poet  and  the  Poetic  Gift,"  he  writes 
to  those  who  would  attempt  in  verse  to  reach  and 
express  the  truth : 

"  Shun  passion,  fold  the  hands  of  thrift, 

Sit  still,  and  Truth  is  near  ; 
Suddenly  it  will  uplift 

Your  eyelids  to  the  sphere ; 
Wait  a  little ;  you  shall  see 

The  portraiture  of  things  to  be." 

It  was  this  uplifting  of  the  eye,  in  truly  Miltonic 
manner,  to  the  vision  of  the  sphere,  to  the  partial 
view,  at  least,  of  the  infinities  and  immensities, 
on  which  he  zealously  insisted  as  essential  to  the 
first  idea  of  a  poet's  function,  applying  peculiarly 
to  the  poet  what  he  writes  of  every  true  inquirer : 


RALPH    WALDO   EMERSOX.  61 

"  Around  the  man  who  seeks  a  noble  end, 
Not  angels,  but  divinities,  attend." 

Herein  is  found  one  of  the  most  potent  reasons 
for  a  knowledge  of  the  poetry  of  Emerson  on 
the  part  of  every  high-minded  man,  and  herein 
one  of  its  strongest  claims  upon  the  attention  of 
the  clergy,  in  that  the  effect  of  it  is  spiritually 
invigorating  and  exalting.  No  man  can  read 
it  intelligently  and  sympathetically  and  not  be 
made  the  purer  and  nobler  thereby,  and  it  is  in 
this  spirit,  primarily,  that  it  is  to  be  perused.  If 
we  come  to  it  as  we  come  to  the  poetry  of 
Holmes  or  Lowell,  or  even  as  to  that  of  the 
gentle  and  gracious  Whittier,  we  shall  come 
amiss.  Even  Bryant  and  Longfellow  are  medi- 
tative in  a  different  way.  No  poet  is  more  unique 
than  Emerson  in  the  specific  tone  and  quality  of 
his  contemplative  verse,  as  no  other  poet  can  for 
a  moment  be  mistaken  for  him.  We  should  as 
little  look  in  any  other  American  bard  for  such 
poems  as  "  The  Sphinx,"  "  The  World,"  "  Soul," 
"  Sursum  Corda,"  and  "  Brahma,"  as  look  in 
Emerson  for  "  Evangeline  "  or  "  Snow-bound." 
On  certain  broad  lines  of  poetic  effort  these  vari- 
ous poets  meet  and  commune,  but  as  each  of 
them  may  be  said  to  have  a  sphere  of  his  own, 


62  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Emerson,  of  all  others,  occupies  some  territory 
absolutely  alone,  and  will  admit  of  no  intruder, 
and  this  exclusive  area  is  especially  that  in  which 
poetic  sublimity  rises  to  its  highest  level.  Hence, 
we  come  amiss  to  such  a  poetic  seer  if  we  come 
to  be  merely  interested  or  entertained,  or  to  find 
the  conditions  of  what  is  known  as  readable  and 
popular  verse.  Merely  to  be  readable  no  poet 
ever  aimed  less  directly  than  Emerson.  Great 
ideas  were  latent  within  him,  striving  toward  ex- 
pression. Great  ideals  were  before  him,  toward 
the  realization  of  which  he  was  ever  aiming,  but 
all  without  a  thought  of  personal  fame  or  of  a 
large  literary  constituency  or  even  the  progress 
of  letters,  or  of  anything  save  the  utterance  of 
truth  for  the  truth's  sake  and  the  highest  good 
of  man.  A  few  citations  from  his  verse  will  con- 
firm these  statements  to  every  intelligent  reader. 
Thus  in  "  Good-By  "  he  writes : 

"  Good-by  to  Flattery's  fawning  face  ; 
To  Grandeur,  with  his  wise  grimace ; 
To  upstart  Wealth's  averted  eye; 
To  supple  Office,  low  and  high  ; 
To  crowded  halls,  to  court  and  street ; 
To  frozen  hearts  and  hasting  feet ; 
To  those  who  go  and  those  who  come ; 
Good-by,  proud  world!   I'm  going  home. 


RALPH    WALDO   EMERSON.  G3 

Oil,  when  I  am  safe  in  my  sylvan  home, 
I  tread  on  the  pride  of  Greeee  and  Rome ; 
And  when  I  am  stretched  beneath  the  pines, 
Where  the  evening  star  so  holy  shines, 
I  laugh  at  the  lore  and  pride  of  man, 
At  the  sophist  schools  and  the  learned  clan  ; 
For  what  are  they  all,  in  their  high  conceit, 
When  man  in  the  bush  with  God  may  meet." 

There  is  in  lines  such  as  these  an  almost  Mosaic 
or  Hebraic  element,  scorning  all  contact  with 
what  is  merely  material  and  worldly,  and  mak- 
ing communion  with  God  and  the  good  the  one 
central  business  of  life.  Wealth  and  station  and 
the  best  that  earth  can  offer  are  as  nothing  in 
comparison  with  love  and  adoration  and  worship 
and  the  daily  contemplation  of  the  divine.  So, 
he  writes  in  "  Woodnotes  "  : 

"  Go  where  he  will,  the  wise  man  is  at  home ; 
His  hearth  the  earth,  his  hall  the  azure  dome ; 
Where  his  clear  spirit  leads  him,  there's  his  road, 
By  God's  own  light  illumined  and  foreshowed." 

This  reads  as  if  from  Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis," 
only  possessing  a  deeper  meaning  and  pulsating 
with  a  more  vigorous  spiritual  life.  How  much 
like  Bryant  his  love  of  solitude  in  the  depths  of 
the  forests  and  the  hills,  as  he  sings : 


64  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

"  Whoso  walks  in  solitude 
And  inhabiteth  the  wood, 
Choosing  light,  wave,  rock,  and  bird 
Before  the  money-loving  herd, 
Into  that  forester  shall  pass 
From  these  companions,  power  and  grace!" 

It  was  the  "  money-loving  herd  "  that  he  instinc- 
tively shunned,  protesting  that  life  could  not  be 
reduced  to  a  commercial  basis,  and  that  it  was 
worth  living  only  to  the  degree  in  which  one 
could  rise  above  its  lower  levels  to  the  vision  and 
love  of  the  best.  In  his  lines  on  "  May-day," 
"The  Adirondack^, "  "Nature,"  the  theistic 
verges  closely  on  the  pantheistic,  as  he  sees 
"the  front  of  God"  wherever  he  looks,  and  in- 
sists that,  if  we  but  listen  closely,  we  can  hear 
the  voices  of  the  spheres  and  stars : 

"  Over  his  head  were  the  maple  buds, 
And  over  the  tree  was  the  moon, 
And  over  the  moon  were  the  starry  studs 
That  drop  from  the  angels'  shoon." 

As  he  sings  in  his  "  Fragments  on  the  Poet  "  : 

"  Let  me  go  where'er  I  will, 
I  hear  a  sky-born  music  still." 

No  couplet  could  better  express  the  essential 
spirit  of  the  personality  and  poetry  of  Emerson, 


RALPH   WALDO   EMERSON.  G5 

with  his  heartand  eareveropen  to  catch  the  sound 
of  that  "  sky-born  music  "  that  he  loved  to  hear. 

"  It  sounds  from  all  things  old, 

It  sounds  from  all  things  young, 
From  all  that's  fair,  from  all  that's  foul, 

Peals  out  a  cheerful  song. 
It  is  not  only  in  the  rose, 

It  is  not  only  in  the  bird, 
Not  only  where  the  rainbow  glows, 

Nor  in  the  song  of  woman  heard. 
But  in  the  darkest,  meanest  things 
There  alway,  alway,  something  sings." 

This  "  something"  was  the  voice  of  God  in  the 
world,  the  clear  and  unmistakable  note  from 
Heaven,  calling  men  aside  from  sin  and  care  and 
worldly  ambitions  to  the  meditation  and  worship 
of  God.  No  din  of  the  market-place  or  crowded 
street  could  be  so  loud  as  to  prevent  the  hear- 
ing of  this  clear  call  from  above,  and  no  science, 
philosophy,  literature,  art,  or  life  could  be  ac- 
cepted that  did  not  hear  and  heed  this  voice 
from  Heaven.  Emerson  called  himself  a  Chris- 
tian theist.  His  verse  is  thus  Christianly  theistic, 
conceived  and  composed  under  the  guidance  of 
those  spiritual  laws  which  he  was  so  fond  of 
stating  and  impressing.  Evincing  something 
of  Shelley's  supernaturalism,  he  carefully  keeps 


66  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE  LYRICS. 

this  side  the  dangerous  line  which  Shelley  so 
often  crosses,  in  the  safer  and  saner  company  of 
Milton  and  Wordsworth  and  Bryant.  If,  indeed, 
he  ever  errs,  his  error  is  itself  pardonable,  in  that 
we  discern  the  overmastering  purpose  to  exalt 
the  divine  above  the  human,  and  vitally  connect 
poetry  and  all  literature  with  the  celestial  verities. 
One  of  Matthew  Arnold's  most  famous  papers  is 
on  Emerson,  in  which  he  takes  occasion,  some- 
what cynically,  to  depreciate  his  work  and  art. 
How  vastly  superior,  however,  is  the  American 
poet  to  the  British  in  that  profound  spirituality 
of  manner  and  purpose  of  which  we  are  speak- 
ing, so  that  where  the  one  keeps  his  eye  clearly 
on  the  wisdom  and  beneficence  of  God,  the 
other  first  doubts  divine  truth  and  then  ques- 
tions his  own  doubts,  until  poet  and  reader  alike 
are  lost  in  an  endless  maze  of  vagaries! 

So  have  Carlyle  and  Emerson  been  brought 
into  conspicuous  relationship  by  that  notable 
correspondence  between  them  which  is  one  of 
the  treasures  of  modern  literature,  and  yet,  here 
again,  how  serene  and  uplifting  the  moral  influ- 
ence of  the  Concord  poet  as  compared  with  that 
hesitating  and  skeptical  attitude  assumed  by  his 
British  contemporary  whenever  he  attempts  to 


RALPH    WALDO   EMERSON.  G7 

deal  with  the  fundamental  problems  of  human 
life !  He  warned  young  men  against  the  appar- 
ently successful  principles  of  Napoleon,  because 
he  was  "the  man  of  the  world."  He  defends 
Swedenborg  as  he  does  simply  from  his  passion- 
ate love  for  the  supernal  in  doctrine  and  life, 
while,  with  all  his  admiration  for  Goethe,  he 
takes  exception  to  him  because  "  he  has  not  as- 
cended to  the  highest  grounds  from  which  gen- 
ius has  spoken,  has  not  worshiped  the  highest 
unity,  and  is  incapable  of  a  self-surrender  to 
the  moral  sentiment."  In  his  pages  on  "The 
Preacher  "  he  laments  that  "  the  venerable  and 
beautiful  traditions  in  which  we  were  educated 
are  losing  their  hold  on  human  belief,"  and 
prophesies  that  "  the  next  age  will  behold  God 
in  the  ethical  laws." 

Thus,  in  prose  and  verse  alike,  this  New  Eng- 
land apostle  of  truth,  as  he  conceived,  wrote  and 
strove  for  the  larger  and  better  things,  and  aimed 
to  lift  the  world  somewhat  above  itself  to  the 
thought  of  God  and  goodness  and  purity  and  love. 

Emerson  was  more  than  a  merely  meditative 
poet.  He  was  the  real  poet-preacher  of  his  time, 
"  approbated,"  as  he  would  say,  to  the  ministry 
of  right  and  truth. 


EDGAR    ALLAN  POE. 


-    '-'      -    ■   "    ',  k'" 


<$&**.°4%, 


iSoQ-r$4Q. 


CHAPTER    FIFTH. 

EDGAR    ALLAN    POE. 

As  the  recently  issued  "  Letters  of  Matthew 
Arnold  "  serve  to  call  renewed  attention  to  his  in- 
teresting life  and  work,  so  the  latest  and  best 
edition  of  Poe's  works,  by  Stedman  &  Wood- 
bery,  invites  us  once  again  to  examine  the  per- 
sonality and  literary  product  of  this  fascinating 
author.  Rarely  does  a  name  come  before  the 
student  of  literature  that  elicits  so  much  sympa- 
thy and  earnest  inquiry,  if  so  be  something  like 
justice  may  be  done  him  as  a  man  and  writer. 

Though,  as  Whipple  states  it,  "  he  was  cursed 
by  an  incurable  perversity  of  character,"  the 
more  we  reflect  and  investigate,  the  more  in- 
clined we  are  to  attribute  most  of  his  errors  to 
this  inherited  curse,  and,  less  and  less,  to  mali- 
cious purpose  and  preference.  Mis  nature  was 
complex  and  contradictory — a  kind  of  battle- 
73 


74  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE    LYRICS. 

ground  for  discordant  elements.  So  imperious, 
at  times,  that  he  could  say,  "  My  whole  nature 
utterly  revolts  at  the  idea  that  there  is  any  be- 
ing in  the  universe  superior  to  myself," he  would, 
at  the  next  moment,  evince  a  docility  of  spirit 
and  control  of  temper  as  attractive  as  it  was  sur- 
prising. At  times  disingenuous,  and  brooking 
no  appeal  from  his  decisions,  he  would,  again, 
be  as  tender  as  a  woman  in  his  considerate  re- 
gard for  others.  Hence,  the  different  estimates 
of  which  he  has  been  the  subject,  and,  he*nce,  the 
safety  of  the  prophecy  that,  while  critics  judge 
and  readers  read,  Edgar  Allan  Poe's  character 
and  writings  will  be,  as  Arnold  would  say,  "  in- 
teresting." The  constant  demand,  as  the  pub- 
lishers tell  us,  for  his  prose  and  verse  compels 
the  conviction  that  there  is  that  in  what  he  was 
and  what  he  wrote  that  appeals  both  to  educated 
and  popular  taste,  and  holds  him  safely  in  his 
place  as  one  of  the  few  prominent  names  in 
American  letters. 

Our  present  purpose  has  to  do  exclusively 
with  Poe  as  a  poet,  no  special  reference  being 
made  either  to  his  work  as  a  writer  of  tales  or 
as  a  literary  critic. 

We  are  dealing,   moreover,  with  lyric   verse 


EDGAR   ALLAN  POE.  75 

only,  and,  within  the  lyric  province  itself,  only 
with  that  specific  type  that  is  meditative.  Foe's 
poetic  product  is  by  no  means  extensive.  As 
far  as  mere  number  of  poems  is  concerned,  they 
are  not  more  than  half  a  hundred  titles,  while 
the  most  of  these  are  below  the  average  length. 
As  far  as  poetic  class  or  form  is  concerned,  they 
are  practically  confined  to  the  kind  we  are  dis- 
cussing,— the  lyric, — no  epic  being  included, 
and,  with  the  exception  of  the  unpublished 
poem,  M  Scenes  from  Politian,"  no  dramatic 
verse,  though  in  "The  Raven"  there  is  a 
marked  dramatic  cast  and  effect.  As  a  poet, 
moreover,  his  fame  may  be  said  to  rest  upon 
a  very  few  productions,  written  in  the  closing 
decade  of  his  brief  life  of  forty  years,  these 
conspicuous  examples  being  such,  not  simply  be- 
cause of  what  they  are  in  themselves,  but  also 
of  that  poetic  "  promise  and  potency  "  that  they 
are  seen  to  contain.  He  was  possessed  of  the 
genuine  poetic  sense,  "  the  sense  of  beaut}," 
the  sense  of  form,  of  ideal,  of  esthetic  art. 

Early  in  life  he  wrote :  "  I  am  a  poet,  if  deep 
worship  of  all  beauty  can  make  me  one.  I 
would  give  the  world  to  embody  one  half  the 
ideas  afloat  in  my  imagination."      He  went  so 


70  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE    LYRICS. 

far,  indeed,  as  to  exalt  beauty  above  truth,  as  the 
end  of  the  poet's  function,  poetry  having  been 
with  him,  as  he  says,  "  not  a  purpose,  but  a  pas- 
sion." His  very  definition  of  poetry  as  "  the 
rhythmical  expression  of  beauty  "  includes  this 
principle  as  dominant. 

We  are  dealing  with  American  lyrics  of  the 
meditative  order,  and  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to 
say  that,  as  Poe's  poems  are  mainly  lyrics,  his 
lyrics  are  mainly  meditative,  of  that  pensive  and 
radically  ethical  type  rightly  expected  of  a  man 
who  spent  his  life  in  aiming  to  solve  the  problems 
and  perplexities  of  his  being.  Never  did  a  man 
start  and  prosecute  these  problems  more  pas- 
sionately and  persistently  than  Poe,  and  often 
awakening  our  deepest  sympathy  and  pity,  as  he 
stands  face  to  face  with  these  problems,  utterly 
unable  to  solve  them.  In  prose  or  verse,  and 
even  in  criticism,  Poe  was,  out  and  out,  a  psychol- 
ogist, a  student  and  an  interpreter  of  character, 
peering  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  secret  re- 
cesses of  the  human  heart.  What  writer  has  so 
dissected  motive  and  conduct  as  Poe  has  done 
in  his  mystic  and  yet  realistic  tales,  as  in  "  Bere- 
nice," "The  Imp  of  the  Perverse,"  and  "Tell- 
tale Heart,"  and  other  sketches!      What  a  stu- 


EDGAR   ALL  AX  POE.  77 

dent  he  is  of  causes  and  effects,  of  the  relation 
of  environment  to  character,  of  good  and  evil 
tendencies,  of  heredity  and  destiny — in  a  word, 
of  man  and  of  men ! 

So  when  we  speak  of  his  verse  as  reflective, 
we  simply  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  he  is  as 
a  poet  what  he  is  as  a  prose  writer  and  a  man — 
a  close  and  a  discriminating  observer  of  human 
personality  and  history,  a  diagnostician  in  the 
realm  of  mind.  As  a  recent  critic  has  expressed 
it,  "  his  poetry  is  a  cry  from  the  land  of  Poe." 
It  is,  indeed,  a  "  cry,"  taking,  sometimes,  the 
strong,  demonstrative  form  of  unrepressed  emo- 
tion over  lost  opportunities  and  unrealized 
ideals,  and,  at  times,  heard  as  a  deep,  suppressed 
sobbing,  as  if  his  heart  would  break  over  his  own 
hapless  state  and  that  of  those  he  loved  as  he 
loved  his  own  life.  It  is  this  "  cry  "  that,  as  we 
read,  we  hear  and  must  hear,  and  which  so  often 
rebukes  all  criticism,  and  summons  us,  despite 
ourselves,  to  the  poet's  defense  and  positive 
praise.  It  is  this  power  of  sympathy  that  has 
turned  the  heads  of  the  wisest  among  us,  as 
they  assert  that,  "  of  all  American  writers,  Poe 
has  made  the  deepest,  and,  in  all  probability,  the 
most  lasting  impression  upon  the  world's  imagi- 


78  AM  ERIC  AX   MEDITATIVE    LYRICS. 

nation;"  "that  he  is  the  solitary  fixed  star  in 
our  firmament,"  "the  most  distinct  of  American 
geniuses." 

With  this  meditative  element  in  view,  it  is  in- 
teresting to  turn  to  the  poems  of  Poe,  to  note  its 
presence  and  impressiveness.  The  very  titles 
of  many  of  the  poems  reveal  it,  such  as  "  A 
Dream,"  "  Spirits  of  the  Dead,"  "  Alone,"  "  The 
Haunted  Palace,"  "  To  One  in  Paradise,"  "  The 
Valley  of  Unrest,"  "The  Sleeper,"  "Silence," 
"  A  Dream  within  a  Dream,"  and  others ;  while 
poems  such  as  "  The  Bells  "  and  "  Ulalume  "  and 
"  Eulalie  "  and  "  The  Raven  "  give  no  indication 
in  their  titles  of  the  wealth  of  thoughtfulness 
that  is  in  them. 

How  touching  his  early  poem,  "Alone"! 

"  From  childhood's  hour  I  have  not  been 
As  others  were ;  I  have  not  seen 
As  others  saw ;  I  could  not  bring 
My  passions  from  a  common  spring ; 
From  the  same  source  I  have  not  taken 
My  sorrow  ;  I  could  not  waken 
My  heart  to  joy  at  the  same  tone ; 
And  all  I  loved,  I  loved  alone. 
Then,  in  my  childhood,  in  the  dawn 
Of  a  most  stormy  life,  was  drawn 
From  every  depth  of  good  and  ill 
The  mystery  which  binds  me  still." 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE.  79 

So,  his  early  poem,  "  A  Dream,"  written  in  the 

same  minor  and  reminiscent  strain  : 

"  In  visions  of  the  dark  night 

I  have  dreamed  of  joy  departed  ; 
But  a  waking  dream  of  life  and  light 
Hath  left  me  broken-hearted. 

"  That  holy  dream,  that  holy  dream, 
While  all  the  world  were  chiding, 
Hath  cheered  me  as  a  lovely  beam 
A  lonely  spirit  guiding." 

His  poems  entitled  "  Dreamland  "  and  "  A 
Dream  within  a  Dream  "  strike  the  same  con- 
templative and  semidespondent  note,  as  if  crav- 
ing human  sympathy  in  his  loss  of  courage  and 
hope  in  the  struggle  of  life.  So,  in  "  Lenore  " 
and  "  Silence  "  and  "  Ulalume  "  and  "  The 
Haunted  Palace,"  a  similar  sentiment  prevails. 

One  of  the  most  suggestive  lyrics  which  Poe 
has  written  of  this  pensive  type  is  that  entitled 
"  A  Hymn,"  addressed  as  it  is  to  the  Virgin 
Maty: 

"  At  morn,  at  noon,  at  twilight  dim, 
Maria,  thou  hast  heard  my  hymn! 
In  joy  and  woe,  in  good  and  ill, 
Mother  of  God,  be  with  me  still! 
When  the  hours  flew  brightly  by, 
And  not  a  cloud  obscured  the  sky, 


80  AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

My  soul,  lest  it  should  truant  be, 
Thy  grace  did  guide  to  thine  and  thee. 
Now,  when  storms  of  Fate  o'ercast 
Darkly  my  Present  and  my  Past, 
Let  my  Future  radiant  shine 
With  sweet  hopes  of  thee  and  thine." 

Even  his  beautifully  rhythmic  poem  "  The 
Bells  "  has  in  it,  with  all  its  "  merriment,"  this 
essential  element  of  pathos,  and 

"  What  a  tale  of  terror,  now,  their  turbulency  tells! 
What  a  world  of  solemn  thought  their  monody  compels!" 

How  touching  the  tribute  that  he  gives,  in 
his  poem  "  To  My  Mother,"  to  her  who,  as  the 
mother  of  Virginia,  had  been  to  him  more  than 
his  own  mother,  and  done  for  him  what  no  other 
one  could  have  done ! 

One  of  his  most  significant  meditative  lyrics 
is  that  on  "  The  Colosseum,"  reminding  us  in 
some  of  its  lines  of  Byron's  reflections  on  the 
same  inspiring  theme : 

"  Type  of  the  antique  Rome!      Rich  reliquary 
Of  lofty  contemplation  left  to  Time 
By  buried  centuries  of  pomp  and  power! 
At  length — at  length — after  so  many  days 
Of  weary  pilgrimage  and  burning  thirst 
(Thirst  for  the  springs  of  love  that  in  thee  lie), 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE.  81 

I  kneel,  an  altered  and  an  humble  man, 
Amid  thy  shadows,  and  so  drink  within 
My  very  soul  thy  grandeur,  gloom,  and  glory!" 

As  to  "The  Raven,"  his  greatest  poem  and 
lyric,  the  reader  need  not  be  told  that  it  is  sur- 
charged with  subdued  and  passionate  interest,  a 
"  cry  "  out  of  the  depth  of  his  soul  for  his  "  lost 
Lenore,"  the  "  cry  "  deepening  in  pathetic  ten- 
derness as 

"  The  silence  was  unbroken,  and  the  stillness  gave  no  token." 

Thus  the  poetry  runs  on  in  this  suppressed 
and  affecting  key,  eliciting,  as  we  read  it,  our 
heart-felt  pity  for  one  who  seemed  forever  to 
utter  unheeded  cries  for  light  and  help,  and 
plunging  from  darkness,  and  deeper  darkness,  as 
his  pitiful  life  developed.  It  is  this  fact  more 
than  any  other  that  explains  the  statement  of  a 
living  critic  :  "  What  Poe  actually  accomplished 
in  poetry  has  been  unsatisfactory  to  the  academic 
mind;  to  human  nature  it  has  been  immensely 
and  persistently  fascinating."  It  is  this  that 
explains  the  apparent  anomaly  that,  debauchee 
that  he  was,  "  his  teaching  was  neither  the  dis- 
gusting sensualism  of  Byron  nor  the  refined 
licentiousness   of    Shelley ;    it    was    a    plea   for 


82  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

beauty  pure  and  simple."  "  He  was  never  low 
enough  to  praise  the  accuracy  with  which  a 
poet,  a  painter,  or  a  novelist  bombarded  the 
sanctity  of  marriage,  or  to  excuse  the  subtlety 
with  which  a  so-called  realist  poisoned,  in  the 
name  of  truth,  the  deepest  fountains  of  char- 
acter." All  this  is  true,  and  forces  us  in  the 
name  of  Christian  charity  to  put  the  best  con- 
struction on  his  character,  and  in  the  last  analy- 
sis to  judge  his  verse  somewhat  independently 
of  his  life. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  however,  what  profoundly 
interests  us  as  we  read  is  this  meditative  attitude 
of  Poe,  as,  "  deep  into  the  darkness  peering,"  he 
seeks  to  know  something  of  the  divine  and  the 
human ;  of  life  and  immortality  and  duty  and 
destiny,  consulting  every  oracle  and  interpreting 
every  sign,  if  so  be  he  may  rise  at  once  and  for- 
ever from  what  he  calls  "  the  Valley  of  Unrest  " 
to  the  upper  land  of  clearer  outlook  and  firmer 
footing.  In  this  respect,  he  is  the  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough  of  American  verse,  the  seeker  for  cer- 
tainty through  doubt  and  fear,  deeming  it  to  be 
his  appointed  lot 

"  To  spend  uncounted  years  of  pain, 
Again,  again,  and  yet  again, 


EDGAR   ALLAN  POE.  S3 

In  working  out  in  heart  and  brain 
The  problem  of  our  being  here." 

A  word,  in  closing,  to  this  effect  should  be 
said  :  that,  of  all  the  meditative  American  lyrists 
whose  verse  we  are  examining,  Poe  is  the  only- 
one  whose  poetry  has  in  it  anything  of  the 
abnormal  and  unhealthful,  and  must,  therefore, 
be  read  with  the  facts  full  in  view.  It  is  not 
enough  to  say  of  him  what  we  have  said  in  the 
line  of  exculpation  and  defense  ;  nor  to  say  that, 
"  however  lewd  the  man  may  have  been,  there 
is  no  pandering  to  lewdness  in  his  writings ;' 
that,  physiologically  adegenerate,  his  degeneracy 
never  reached  his  understanding  of  the  function 
of  art."  These  distinctions,  if  indeed  valid,  are 
too  close  for  comfort  and  moral  safety,  and  we 
need  and  demand  as  our  highest  models  poets 
and  men  who  compel  us  less  frequently  to  as- 
sume the  defensive  and  offer  repeated  apology. 

Poe  and  Bryant,  Poe  and  Emerson,  Poe  and 
Longfellow,  Poe  and  Whittier — what  contrasts 
are  here,  and  all  within  the  region  of  reflective 
verse!  How  radically  different  their  ethical 
points  of  view,  and  with  how  different  a  spirit 
do  they  face  and  aim  to  solve  the  pressing  ques- 
tions of  life  !     Meditative  the  verse  is,  and  preg- 


84  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

nant  with  moral  teaching,  but  with  what  differ- 
ent feelings  do  we  rise  from  the  reading  of  the 
respective  moralists! 

"  And  the  fever  called  '  living' 
Is  conquered  at  last." 

writes  the  disconsolate  Poe  in  his  beautiful  lyric 
''For  Annie."  We  must  look  in  vain  in  the 
poetry  of  any  other  representative  American 
poet  for  so  hopeless  a  sentiment  as  that. 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHETHER 


85 


.■Ill    ■         !■'!■   I.lllll 


i8oj-i8q2. 


CHAPTER    SIXTH. 

JOHN    GREEXLEAF    WHITTIER. 

Of  all  the  poets  of  America,  no  one  would  be 
more  promptly  and  naturally  selected  as,  by  way 
of  distinction,  a  contemplative  author,  than  Whit- 
tier,  the  Quaker  poet,  the  "  prophet  bard,"  the 
"  Hebrew  poet  of  the  nineteenth  century."  His 
first  published  poem,  "  Sicilian  Vespers,"  is 
strikingly  suggestive  of  that  quiet,  pensive 
habit  of  mind  which  characterized  him  in  ear- 
lier and  later  life,  and  made  it  impossible  for  him 
to  be  any  other  than  serenely  meditative  on  the 
great  questions  of  life  and  destiny  that  appealed 
to  his  reverent  mind.  In  Longfellow's  beautiful 
tribute  to  Whittier  on  his  seventieth  birthday, 
in  the  poem  entitled  "  The  Three  Silences  of  Mo- 
linos,"  this  dominant  feature  is  worthily  por- 
trayed : 

"  Three  Silences  there  are  :  the  first  of  speech, 

The  second  of  desire,  the  third  of  thought ; 

89 


90  AMERICAN   MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

These  Silences,  commingling  each  with  each, 
Made  up  the  perfect  Silence  that  he  sought 
And  prayed  for,  and  wherein  at  times  he  caught 
Mysterious  sounds  from  realms  beyond  our  reach. 
O  thou,  whose  daily  life  anticipates 
The  life  to  come,  and  in  whose  thought  and  word 
The  spiritual  world  preponderates, 
Hermit  of  Amesbury!  thou  too  hast  heard 
Voices  and  melodies  from  beyond  the  gates, 
And  speakest  only  when  thy  soul  is  stirred." 


Whittier  is,  indeed,  the  "  hermit-thrush  "  of  our 
American  song,  and  is  never  so  much  himself 
and  so  much  to  others  as  when  embodying  in 
verse  these  "  melodies  from  beyond  the  gates." 

From  his  honorable  ancestry,  the  Greenleafs 
and  Husseys  and  Batchelders,  he  had  come  by 
right  to  this  inheritance  of  a  clear  eye  for  the 
inner  light  and  an  open  ear  to  every  hallowed 
voice,  so  that  when  he  wrote  in  prose  or  verse, 
on  secular  or  sacred  themes,  he  always  wrote  as 
a  disciple  and  lover  of  the  truth,  as  an  author 
with  a  message  from  God  to  men,  and  in  the 
meditative  manner  of  one  of  the  Hebrew-  pro- 
phets. 

It  is  indeed  difficult  for  us  to  understand  how 
his  pacific  and  quiet  spirit  could  bring  itself,  as 
it  did,  voluntarily  into  contact  with  the  coarse 


J01IX   GREENLEAF    WHITTIER.  01 

political  conflicts  of  the  time,  save  as  we  remem- 
ber that  it  was  only  thus  that  he  could  effect  the 
beneficent  work  on  behalf  of  national  honor  and 
the  rights  of  man  which  it  was  given  him  to  do. 
Indeed,  it  is  questionable  whether  a  reformer  of 
sterner  mold  and  more  defiant  methods  would 
have  so  well  succeeded  when  error  was  to  be 
met  by  the  simple  force  of  truth,  and  human 
wrong  to  be  righted  by  patience  and  love  and 
conciliatory  measures.  It  was  thus  that  Whittier 
often  succeeded  where  such  aggressive  spirits  as 
Garrison  failed,  and  in  the  heat  and  thick  of  the 
wildest  passions  of  the  populace  preserved  the 
peace  of  his  spirit,  the  even  tenor  of  his  way,  his 
faith  in  God  and  faith  in  man,  and  often  by  a 
simple  national  lyric  secured  results  which  balls 
and  bayonets  could  not  effect. 

It  was  by  these  songs  of  "  religious  and  artis- 
tic repose,"  as  Kennedy  terms  them,  that  he  won 
his  way  into  the  hearts  of  his  very  enemies,  and 
endeared  himself  to  the  thousands  whose  cause 
he  had  espoused. 

The  verse  of  Whittier  is,  in  a  valid  sense,  lyric 
or  idyllic  from  first  to  last,  and  to  this  degree  has 
in  it  a  distinctive  reflective  element,  dealing  with 
the  hopes  and  fears,  the  joys  and  sorrows,  the 


92  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

struggles  and  triumphs  of  men,  and  always  with 
his  eye  upon  that  spiritual  principle  underneath 
them  all  and  that  spiritual  outcome  to  which  they 
all  were  working. 

More  specifically,  his  poems  might  be  classified 
as  national,  lyric,  and  religious  or  ethical,  includ- 
ing, respectively,  such  examples  as  "  The  Vir- 
ginia Slave  Mother,"  "  Among  the  Hills,"  and 
"  My  Soul  and  I."  No  careful  reader  of  Whit- 
tier,  however,  need  be  told  that  these  distinc- 
tions are  purely  conventional,  and  that  it  is  a 
distinction  without  a  difference  to  tell  us  that 
"  The  Centennial  Hymn  "  is  national  only,  and 
"  The  Tent  on  the  Beach  "  lyric  only,  while 
"  Telling  the  Bees  "  is  ethical  and  contemplative. 

Among,  his  poems  called  national  are  such 
titles  as  "  Laus  Deo,"  "The  Reformer,"  "The 
Moral  Warfare,"  and  "The  Exiles";  while 
such  descriptive  lyrics  as  "The  River  Path," 
"  The  Changeling,"  "  St.  Gregory's  Guest,"  and 
"  Among  the  Hills,"  are  replete  with  sober  re- 
flection, and  cannot  be  appreciatively  read  save 
by  him  who  takes  them  up  with  clearness  of 
spirit,  and  for  high  and  noble  ends.  Among 
his  poems,  however,  that  have  a  pronounced 
meditative  type,  often  assuming  a  specific  reli- 


JOHX  GREEN  LEAF    WHITTIER,  93 

gious  impressiveness,  may  be  cited  "  Questions  of 
Life,"  "  The  Shadow  and  the  Light,"  "  Truth," 
"  Revelation,"  "  The  Cry  of  a  Lost  Soul,"  "  The 
Eternal  Goodness,"  "  At  Last,"  "  The  Common 
Question,"  "The Crucifixion,"  "Trinitas,"  "Thy 
Will  be  Done,"  "  Forgiveness,"  "  Andrew  Ry Is- 
mail's Prayer,"  and  such  Hebraic  verses  as 
"  Ezekiel."  These  are  poems  surcharged  with 
moral  and  spiritual  life,  and  would  scarcely  be 
out  of  place  under  the  category  of  American 
hymnology.  In  such  a  list  as  this  it  is  almost 
invidious  to  make  selections.  A  few  representa- 
tive lines  may  be  cited. 

Thus  we  read  in  the  poem,  "  Trust  "  : 

"  The  same  old  baffling  questions!      O  my  friend, 
I  cannot  answer  them.    .    .    . 
I  have  no  answer  for  myself  or  thee, 
Save  that  I  learned  beside  my  mother's  knee  : 
All  is  of  God  that  is,  and  is  to  be ; 
And  God  is  good.      Let  this  suffice  us  still, 
Resting  in  childlike  trust  upon  His  will 
Who  moves  to  His  great  ends  unthwarted  by  the  ill." 

So,  in  the  "  Shadow  and  the  Light  "  : 

"  Oh,  why  and  whither?     God  knows  all; 
I  only  know  that  He  is  good, 
And  that  whatever  may  befall, 

Or  here  or  there,  must  be  the  best  that  could, 


94  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

And  dare  to  hope  that  he  will  make 

The  rugged  smooth,  the  doubtful  plain; 
His  mercy  never  quite  forsake, 

His  healing  visit  every  realm  of  pain ; 
Ah  me!  we  doubt  the  shining  skies, 

Seen  through  our  shadows  of  offense, 
And  drown  with  our  poor,  childlike  cries 

The  cradle-hymn  of  kindly  Providence." 

So,  in  "  Andrew  Rykman's  Prayer,"  one  of  the 
most  tender  and  holy  utterances  of  Whittier's, 
beginning : 

"  Pardon,  Lord,  the  lips  that  dare 
Shape  in  words  a  mortal's  prayer! 
Father!      I  may  come  to  Thee 
Even  with,  the  beggar's  plea, 
As  the  poorest  of  Thy  poor, 
With  my  needs  and  nothing  more; 
Yet,  O  Lord,  through  all  a  sense 
Of  Thy  tender  providence 
Stays  my  failing  heart  in  Thee 
And  confirms  the  feeble  knee. 
Hours  there  be  of  inmost  calm, 
Broken  but  by  grateful  psalm, 
When  I  love  Thee  more  than  fear  Thee, 
And  Thy  blessed  Christ  seems  near  me, 
With  forgiving  look,  as  when 
He  beheld  the  Magdalen. 
Well  I  know  that  all  things  move 
To  the  spheral  rhythm  of  love, 
That  to  Thee,  O  Lord  of  all! 
Nothing  can  of  chance  befall ;  " 


JOHN  GREENLEAF    WHITTIER.  95 

and  so  on   through  lines  of  exquisite   spiritual 
richness,  so  pertinently  closing-  with  the  query : 

"  Thus  did  Andrew  Rykman  pray. 
Are  we  wiser,  better  grown, 
That  we  may  not,  in  our  day, 
Make  his  prayer  our  own?  " 

In  his  matchless  lyric,  "  The  Eternal  Good- 
ness," where  shall  we  begin  or  end! 

"  No  offering  of  my  own  I  have, 

Nor  works  my  faith  to  prove ; 
I  can  but  give  the  gifts  He  gave, 

And  plead  His  love  for  love. 
And  so  beside  the  Silent  Sea 

I  wait  the  muffled  oar ; 
No  harm  from  Him  can  come  to  me 

On  ocean  or  on  shore, 
I  know  not  where  His  islands  lift 

Their  fronded  palms  in  air  ; 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 

Beyond  His  love  and  care." 

This  is  not  only  as  choice  lyric  verse  as  can 
be  found  within  the  limits  of  English  literature, 
but  it  is  suffused  and  saturated  with  spiritual 
life,  sanctified  throughout  by  the  presence  of  a 
holy  trust  in  God  and  goodness,  and  an  ever- 
present  and  a  controlling  desire  to  be  of  moral 
service    to    men.      In   no    British   or   American 


96  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

verse  has  the  border-line  between  the  seeular 
and  the  sacred  been  so  narrow,  nor  has  any  poet 
been  less  subject  than  Whittier  to  the  charge  of 
carrying  the  secular  to  the  extreme  of  the  coarse 
and  the  frivolous,  or  the  sacred  to  the  extreme 
of  the  somber  and  morose.  Poetry  was  with 
him  nothing  less  than  a  divinely  assigned  voca- 
tion for  the  realization  of  the  highest  human 
ends.  No  prophet  or  preacher  ever  plied  his 
calling  with  a  more  devoted  consecration  to  the 
interests  of  truth  and  righteousness ;  so  that, 
whatever  his  theme  might  be,  he  approached 
it  and  presented  it  in  a  reverent  spirit,  never 
allowing  himself  to  descend  to  those  shifts  and 
devices  by  which  so  many  authors  seek  to  gain 
the  popular  ear.  In  his  "  Songs  of  Labor  and 
Reform,"  as  they  are  called,  and  in  his  "  Anti- 
slavery  Poems  "  and  "  Poems  of  Nature,"  as  well 
as  in  his  specifically  subjective  and  ethical  verse, 
there  is  found  this  same  reflective  and  reverent 
vein  running  through  them  all,  and  thus  giving 
them  a  character  and  adorning  that  definitely 
marked  them  from  all  the  inferior  forms  of  con- 
temporary poetry. 

He  wrote  on  "  Seed-time  and  Harvest,"  "  The 
Fishermen  "   and    "  Lumbermen  "   and   "  Ship- 


J01IX  GREENLEAF    WHITTIER.        '      97 

builders,"  "  The  River  Path  "  and  "  Hazel  Blos- 
soms," "  The  Slave-ship,"  and  "  The  Crisis," 
with  his  characteristic  serenity  and  moral  grav- 
ity,  so  as  to  carry  the  truth  he  was  uttering 
with  impressiveness  and  effectiveness  to  the 
hearts  and  consciences  of  men.  Never  has  a 
poet  more  thoroughly  deserved  to  be  called  "  the 
poet  of  conscience,"  as  he  appealed  directly  and 
continuously  to  the  moral  faculty,  and  to  the 
sense  of  right  in  man,  to  the  convictions  of  jus- 
tice and  law  and  national  obligation.  It  was 
this  feature  more  than  all  else  that  redeemed  the 
"  Antislavery  Poems  "  of  Whittier  from  the  criti- 
cism of  being  sentimental  or  indignant  tirades 
against  an  existing  evil ;  the  fanatical  outbursts 
of  a  would-be  reformer,  whose  better  judgment 
for  the  time  was  under  the  control  of  his  passions 
and  prejudices.  Never  did  a  man  hold  himself 
better  in  hand,  or  better  know  precisely  what 
he  was  doing  and  why  he  was  doing  it,  than  did 
Whittier  when  penning  such  fiery  invectives  as 
"The Hunters  of  Men,"  "  Stanzas  for  theTimes," 
"  The  Branded  Hand,"  and  "  Clerical  Oppres- 
sors." It  was,  indeed,  a  holy  war  that  he  was 
waging  in  those  days  and  those  verses,  when 
smooth-flowing   lyrics   on   love   and   friendship 


98  AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

gave  way  by  right  to  impassioned  protests  in  the 
name  of  God  against  injustice  and  cruelty  and 
violations  of  moral  law. 

"  Shall  tongues  be  mute  when  deeds  are  wrought 
Which  well  might  shame  extremest  hell? 

Shall  freemen  lock  the  indignant  thought? 
Shall  Pity's  bosom  cease  to  swell? 

Shall  Honor  bleed?  shall  Truth  succumb? 

Shall  pen  and  press  and  soul  be  dumb?  " 

So,  in  "  The  Crisis,"  he  writes  in  similar  strain  : 

"  By  all  for  which  the  martyrs  bore  the  agony  and  shame, 
By  all  the  warning  words  of  truth  for  which  the  prophets  came, 
By  the  Future  which  awaits  us,  by  ail  the  hopes  which  cast 
Their  faint  and  trembling  beams  across  the  blackness  of  the 

Past, 
And  by  the  blessed  thought  of  Him  who  for  earth's  freedom 

died — 
O  my  people!    0  my  brothers!   let  us  choose  the  righteous 

side." 

This  is  Whittier,  speaking,  as  Longfellow  tells 
us,  when  his  "  soul  is  stirred,"  when  his  con- 
science is  quickened,  if  so  be  he  may  quicken 
the  conscience  of  others,  and,  to  some  degree,  at 
least,  rectify  the  wrongs  that  pass  un rebuked  be- 
fore his  eyes.  We  call  this  meditative  verse,  and 
so  it  is,  not  in  the  sense  that  it  is  subdued  and 
subjective,  as  his  lines  on  "Trust"  and  "The 


JOHX  GREENLEAF    WHITTIER.  99 

Prayer-seeker"  and  "The  Friends  Burial,"  but 
that  it  is  the  intense  utterance  of  his  reflections 
on  national  history,  as  developing  before  him.  As 
he  mused,  the  fire  burned,  and  must  reveal  itself, 
as  it  did,  in  the  language  of  spiritual  passion.  In 
this  and  kindred  verse  Whittier  was  not  only  a 
political  reformer,  but  a  Christian  reformer,  and 
sought  what  he  sought  in  the  name  and  for  the 
glory  of  God. 

Attention  has  often  been  called  to  the  domes- 
ticity of  Whittier's  verse,  the  homeness  of  it,  so 
that,  as  we  read  it,  we  think  of  Burns  in  his 
"  Cotter's  Saturday  Night,"  or  Allan  Ramsay's 
"  Gentle  Shepherd,"  and  can,  indeed,  gather 
from  his  pages  a  full-sized  picture  of  the  local 
life  of  the  New  England  of  his  day.  The}*  have 
this  reminiscent  or  retrospective  element  in 
them,  recalling  the  old  days  and  the  old  friends 
and  the  old  scenes.  In  no  form  of  his  poetry 
does  this  attractive  meditative  feature  appear 
more  fully,  taking  on  richer  type  and  meaning 
as  the  years  go  by  and  increasing  age  does  its 
mellowing  and  gracious  work.  Never  outside 
the  limits  of  his  native  land,  and  but  seldom  be- 
yond the  borders  of  his  own  New  England,  he 
was  a  son  of  the  soil  and  a  poet  of  the  soil  as  but 


100         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   IYRICS. 

few  have  been,  so  that  all  he  spoke  and  wrote 
was  English  and  New  English  to  the  core,  and 
ever  marked  by  the  distinctive  lineaments  of  its 
Puritan  origin  and  home.  He  thus  writes  of 
"Maud  Muller,"  "The  Old  Burying-ground," 
"  In  School-days,"  and  "June  on  the  Merrimac," 
with  all  the  gusto  of  a  New  England  boy ;  and 
would  have  us  know  in  "  Snow-bound  "  that,  as 
the  rigor  of  winter  increased,  the  inside  delights 
of  the  fireside  were  heightened,  and  he  and  his 
friends  were  happy  all  the  livelong  day  and  all 
the  livelong  year ;  nor  amid  all  the  joy  does 
he  allow  us  for  a  moment  to  forget  it  is  to  a 
kindly  Providence  over  us  that  we  owe  all  our 
earthly  blessings,  and  must  render  daily  praise 
and  service. 

In  fine,  so  pronounced  is  this  contemplative 
feature  and  so  persistent  is  the  poet  in  remind- 
ing his  readers  of  their  obligations  to  God  and 
man,  that  the  charge  of  extreme  religiousness 
has  been  made  against  him,  a  charge  that  can- 
not be  substantiated  by  the  honest  reader,  but 
one,  we  are  free  to  say,  that  Whittier  would  will- 
ingly have  incurred  rather  than  to  have  invited 
the  criticism  at  the  other  extreme  of  a  manifest 
want  of  moral  motive. 


JOHN   GREENLEAF    WHITTIER.  101 

In  noting  the  meditative  character  of  Whit- 
tier's  verse,  special  reference  should  be  made  to 
what  may  be  called  his  hymns.  One  of  these  is 
found  in  the  poem  entitled  "  The  Wish  of  To- 
day," and  opens  with  the  lines: 

"  I  ask  not  now  for  gold  to  gild 

With  mocking  shine  a  weary  frame; 
The  yearning  of  the  mind  is  stilled; 
I  ask  not  now  for  fame." 

His  "  Eternal  Goodness,"  from  which  we  have 
already  quoted,  is  substantially  a  hymn.  The 
poem  "  Our  Master  "  is  virtually  a  hymn,  and  so 
embodied  by  Duffield  in  his  "  English  Hymns"  : 

"  Immortal  Love,  forever  full, 
Forever  flowing  free, 
Forever  shared,  forever  whole, 
A  never-ebbing  sea." 

So,  such  poems  as  "The  Star  of  Bethlehem," 
"  Invocation,"  "  Vesta,"  and  "  At  Last,"  are 
easily  classified  under  hymnologVj  both  as  to 
context  and  spirit,  so  illustrative  are  they  of 
the  mingling  of  praise  and  prayer,  and,  as  Duf- 
field states  it,  "  come  naturally,  like  the  verses 
of  Keble,  into  the  service  of  the  church." 

What  earlier  or  later  poet,  we  may  ask,  has 


102        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE  LYRICS. 

wrought  more  effectively  and  lovingly  in  the 
service  of  the  church?  His  life  from  first  to  last 
was  ministerial,  a  worship  and  a  ministry  in  one, 
intense  in  its  devotion  to  every  good  cause,  and 
actively  instrumental  in  every  line  of  Christian 
effort. 

Not  a  few  worthy  authors  are  now  busily  at 
work  in  the  expanding  field  of  American  letters, 
men  of  genius  in  their  way,  and  giving  promise 
of  large  and  beneficent  result ;  but  where  shall 
we  look  to  find  a  true  successor  of  this  old  mas- 
ter of  song,  who  sang  as  naturally  as  the  birds 
sing,  and  only  for  the  divine  glory  and  the  com- 
mon good ! 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 


103 


>;v>«:.:'    '      :    :j      .     «>,   / 


iSig-iSgi. 


CHAPTER    SEVENTH. 

JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

Mr.  Lowell,  in  so  far  as  his  poetry  is  con- 
cerned, is  remembered,  more  especially,  perhaps, 
by  his  "  Biglow  Papers  "  and  "  The  Fable  for 
Critics,"  the  satirical  and  serio-comic  character 
of  each  of  these  poems  making  them  attractive 
to  all  classes  of  people.  In  neither  of  them, 
however,  is  there  any  distinctive  presence  of  the 
contemplative  element,  so  that  readers  of  these 
productions  only  might  be  unwittingly  led  to 
assume  that  this  was  Lowell's  only  form  of  verse. 
A  closer  inspection  of  his  poetry  reveals  the  fact 
that  the  humorous  and  satirical  are  but  a  portion 
of  his  poetic  product,  the  general  descriptive  and 
lyric  feature  being  also  prominent.  Critics  speak 
also  of  his  national  and  legendary  verse,  in  each 
of  which  classes,  if  regarded  as  distinct,  as  con- 
spicuously in  the  lyric,  the  meditative  tone  and 
quality  are,  in  fact,  the  most  characteristic. 
107 


1  OS         A MERIt  \1  X  Ml: Dl  7 ,/  7  7 1 TE    7, ) 'RIC \S\ 

When  Lowell  is  called  "  our  new  Theocritus," 
reference  is  made  to  the  prominent  presence  of 
this  idyllic  quality.  In  his"  Poemsof  Nature,"  so- 
called,  as  in  his  sonnets,  his  poems  of  sentiment 
and  of  religion,  it  is  needless  to  note  that  the  re- 
flective phase  is  necessarily  pronounced.  More- 
over, Mr.  Lowell  is  reflective  in  his  own  way, 
and  in  fullest  accord  with  his  unique  individual- 
ity as  an  author,  even  as  Bryant  and  Emerson 
and  Longfellow  and  Whittier  and  Holmes  are, 
respectively,  meditative.  A  contemplative  son- 
net from  Lowell,  such  as  the  one  beginning: 

"  Great  truths  are  portions  of  the  soul  of  man," 

or  the  one : 

"  There  never  yet  was  flower  fair  in  vain," 

has  in  its  lines  and  between  the  lines  the  peculiar 
Lowellian  cast  and  character,  meaning  from  Lo- 
well something  different  from  that  which  a  simi- 
lar sonnet  would  mean  from  any  of  his  great 
contemporaries  whom  we  are  studying.  We 
look  in  vain  in  Lowell  for  such  subjective  poems 
as  Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis  "  and  "  The  Flood  of 
Years,"  or  Emerson's  "  Sphinx  "  and  "  Brahma," 
or  Longfellow's  "  Divine  Tragedy,"  or  Whittier's 


JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL.  109 

"  Toussaint  l'Overture,"  or  Holmes's  "  Living 
Temple."  Each  of  these  authors  looks  at  the 
world  and  human  life  from  his  own  point  of 
view ;  has  his  own  method  of  solving  the  press- 
ing moral  problems  that  confront  him ;  insists 
upon  the  choice  and  use  of  his  own  phraseology  ; 
and  is,  in  fact,  as  careful  not  to  be  confounded  in 
his  meditative  verse  with  any  other  poet  as  he  is 
not  to  be  confounded  with  any  other  in  any  im- 
portant sphere  of  authorship.  Of  the  six  poets 
mentioned,  Lowell  and  Holmes  are  less  contem- 
plative than  the  others,  both  in  their  personal- 
ity and  poetry,  and  Holmes  the  least  so  of  all. 
There  is  a  spiritual  fineness  in  Emerson  not 
found  in  any  of  them,  as  there  is  a  sweetness  of 
temper  in  Whittier  nowhere  else  discernible.  If 
we  may  so  express  it,  the  meditative  type  of 
Holmes  is  that  of  a  thoughtful  man  of  the  world, 
as  compared  with  the  more  introspective  type  of 
such  a  poet  as  Longfellow,  while  Lowell  may 
fitly  be  called  the  scholarly  observer  of  the 
morals  and  manners  of  men.  His  reflections 
are  from  the  standpoint  of  educated  sense  and 
taste,  and  always  presented  in  attractive  form. 
He  is,  by  way  of  excellence,  the  cultured  thinker, 
never  forgetting   in   his   musings   and   moraliz- 


110         AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

ings  that  he  is  a  man  of  letters,  at  his  study 
windows  and  among  his  books.  It  is  this 
studied  and  artistic  element  that  differentiates 
his  meditative  verse  from  that  of  others,  and 
somewhat  detracts  from  its  value  in  the  eye  of 
readers  whose  natures  are  deeply  emotional  and 
quickly  responsive  to  every  impassioned  appeal. 
For  this  reason,  if  for  no  other,  Lowell's  reflec- 
tive poems  will  never  have  so  vital  a  hold  upon 
the  hearts  of  men  as  those  of  Longfellow  and 
Whittier. 

In  noting  more  particularly  what  Lowell  has 
written  of  this  subjective  or  pensive  order,  we  find 
numerous  examples  of  it  in  three  out  of  the  four 
volumes  of  his  recently  collected  works — in  "The 
Earlier  Poems,"  in  "  Under  the  Willows,"  and  in 
"Heartsease  and  Rue." 

In  the  first  of  these  collections  are  such  poems 
as  "Irene,"  "The  Forlorn,"  "A  Parable,"  his 
various  sonnets,  "  A  Legend  of  Brittany,"  "  The 
Sower,"  "  Extreme  Unction,"  "  Longing,"  and 
"  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal."  Thus,  in  "Irene," 
we  read : 

"  1 1  ers  is  a  spirit  deep,  and  crystal  clear; 
Calmly  beneath  her  earnest  face  it  lies, 
Free  without  boldness,  meek  without  a  fear, 
Quicker  to  look  than  speak  its  sympathies. 


JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL.  Ill 

Far  down  into  her  large  and  patient  eyes 
I  gaze,  deep  drinking  of  the  infinite, 
As,  in  the  mid-watch  of  a  clear,  still  night, 

I  look  into  the  fathomless  blue  skies." 

So,  in  the  lines  in  "  Longing,"  he  speaks  a  help- 
ful word  as  he  sings  : 

"  Ah!  let  ib  hope  that  to  our  praise 

Good  God  not  only  reckons 
The  moments  when  we  trust  His  ways, 

But  when  the  spirit  beckons  ; 
That  some  slight  good  is  also  wrought 

Beyond  self  satisfaction, 
When  we  are  simply  good  in  thought, 

Howe'er  we  fail  in  action." 

In  the  second  collection  are  such  examples 
as  "  Godminster  Chimes,"  "The  Parting  of  the 
Ways,"  "  The  Darkened  Mind,"  "  In  the  Twi- 
light," and  "  The  Foot-path."  From  the  first 
of  these  we  read  : 

"  Through  aisles  of  long-drawn  centuries 

My  spirit  walks  in  thought, 
And  to  that  symbol  lifts  its  eyes 

Which  God's  own  pity  wrought; 
From  Calvary  shines  the  altar's  gleam, 

The  Church's  East  is  there, 
The  Ages  one  great  minster  seem, 

That  throbs  with  praise  and  prayer. 

"  And,  as  the  mystic  aisles  I  pace, 
By  aureoled  workmen  built, 


112         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Lives  ending  at  the  Cross  I  trace 

Alike  through  grace  and  guilt; 
One  Mary  bathes  the  blessed  feet 

With  ointment  from  her  eyes, 
With  spikenard  one,  and  both  are  sweet, 

For  both  are  sacrifice." 

In  the  third  collection  we  emphasize  his  poems 
of  affectionate  tribute  to  Agassiz,  Holmes,  and 
Whittier,  his  "  Das  Ewig-Weibliche,"  "  The  Re- 
call," "Absence,"  and  "A  Christmas  Carol." 
written  for  Sabbath-school  children,  and  full  of 
suggestive  biblical  reference. 

"  '  What  means  this  glory  round  our  feet,' 

The  Magi  mused,  '  more  bright  than  morn?  ' 
And  voices  chanted  clear  and  sweet, 
'  To-day  the  Prince  of  Peace  is  born.' 

'    '  What  means  that  star?  '  the  shepherds  said, 
'  That  brightens  through  the  rocky  glen?  ' 
And  angels,  answering  overhead, 

Sang,  '  Peace  on  earth,  good-will  to  men.' 

"  'Tis  eighteen  hundred  years  and  more 
Since  those  sweet  oracles  were  dumb. 
We  wait  for  Him,  like  them  of  yore; 
Alas!  He  seems  so  slow  to  come! 

"  But  it  was  said,  in  words  of  gold, 
No  time  or  sorrow  e'er  shall  dim, 
That  little  children  might  be  bold 
In  perfect  trust  to  come  to  Him. 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  113 

"  All  round  about  our  feet  shall  shine 
A  light  like  that  the  wise  men  saw 
If  we  our  loving  wills  incline 

To  that  sweet  Life,  which  is  the  Law. 

"  So  shall  we  learn  to  understand 

The  simple  faith  of  shepherds  then, 
And,  clasping  kindly  hand  in  hand, 

Sing,  '  Peace  on  earth,  good-will  to  men.' 

"  And  they  who  do  their  souls  no  wrong, 
But  keep  at  eve  the  faith  of  morn, 
Shall  daily  hear  the  angel  sing, 

'  To-day  the  Prince  of  Peace  is  born.'  " 

From  the  publication  of  Milton's  "  Ode  on  the 
Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity,"  in  1629,  to  Whit- 
tier's  "  Christmas  Carmen,"  we  have  no  Christ 
carol  more  beautiful  than  this,  while  it  possesses 
peculiar  interest  as  coming  from  Lowell  in  the 
way  of  a  loving  service  to  children.  From 
Longfellow  we  are  led  to  look  for  such  remem- 
brances of  childhood  as  he  gives  us  in  "  The 
Children's  Hour  "  and  other  selections,  of  which 
Whittier  so  sweetly  sings  in  his  "The  Poet  and 
the  Children,"  as  Whittier  himself,  in  his  "  Child 
Songs  "  and  elsewhere,  is  thoroughly  at  home 
when  writing  for  the  young.  In  Lowell,  how- 
ever, such  a  strain  is  less  frequently  heard  and 
less  in  accord  with  his  distinctive  mental  and 


114        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

literary  type,  and  this,  when  it  is  found,  as  in  this 
exquisite  poem,  is  all  the  more  impressive.  His 
poetry  fittingly  closes  in  meditative  manner  with 
the  quotation  on  his  "  Sixty-eighth  Birthday  "  : 

"  As  life  runs  on,  the  road  grows  strange 
With  faces  new,  and  near  the  end 
The  milestones  into  headstones  change ; 
'Neath  every  one  we  find  a  friend." 

Those  most  intimate  with  Lowell  could  not 
but  mark,  as  his  life  drew  on  toward  its  close, 
how  some  of  the  less  attractive  features  of  his 
earlier  years  were  modified ;  how  scholastic  re- 
serve gave  place  by  gradual  process  to  a  more 
genial  bearing,  and  the  mellowing  influences  of 
years  came  at  length  to  do  their  perfect  work. 

In  speaking  of  the  reflective  quality  of  Lo- 
well's verse,  as  of  that  of  his  noted  American 
contemporaries,  it  occurs  to  us  to  say  that  this 
contemplative  spirit  is  thoroughly  germane  to  the 
mission  of  the  poet  in  the  world  of  letters  as  a 
specifically  spiritual  mission.  When  it  is  remem- 
bered that  the  earlier  forms  of  verse  were  reli- 
gious, that  the  minstrel  was  often  the  prophet  and 
the  priest,  that  the  poet  as  such  was  supposed  to 
be  in  communion  with  the  invisible  world,  that 
the  ideal  is  essential  to  the  very  conception  of 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  115 

poetry,  it  is  not  strange  if  we  should  find  in  all 
standard  verse,  epic,  dramatic,  and  lyric,  the  su- 
pernal, spiritual  feature  expressing  itself  in  medi- 
tative forms,  and,  most  especially,  in  the  lyric. 
It  would  seem  to  require  a  special  effort  on  the 
poet's  part  to  be  other  than  sober-minded,  rever- 
ent toward  truth  and  goodness,  and  responsive 
to  every  high  and  holy  appeal.  A  flippant, 
frivolous,  undevout  poet  is  as  abnormal  as  the 
undevout  astronomer,  and,  for  the  same  reason, 
that  it  is  his  special  vocation  to  deal  with  what 
is  elevated  and  unearthly.  Unnatural  as  it  is 
in  the  sphere  of  prose  expression,  it  is  far  more 
so  in  poetry,  where,  through  the  medium  of  the 
imagination,  the  poet  is  supposed  to  soar  beyond 
all  that  is  visible  and  material  into  the  upper  and 
purer  air  of  thought  and  truth  and  love  and 
beauty.  It  is  to  the  lasting  honor  of  American 
letters  that  no  one  of  her  representative  poets 
has  failed  to  meet  these  high  conditions,  even 
Foe,  with  all  his  errors  and  weaknesses,  holding 
an  exalted  view  of  verse  as  the  "  rhythmical  ex- 
pression of  beauty,"  and  never  condescending 
for  a  moment  to  the  role  of  the  buffoon  and 
mountebank.  By  no  one  of  our  poets  was  this 
high  conception  of  verse  more  vigorously  main- 


116         AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE    LYRICS. 

tained  than  by  Lowell,  so  that  nothing  more 
surely  provoked  his  righteous  contempt  than  the 
spectacle  of  one  of  these  misguided  poetasters 
playing  with  his  mission  as  a  toy,  utterly  obli- 
vious of  the  divine  vocation  to  which  he  was 
called.  Even  in  his  humor  he  was  serious,  and 
insisted  that  the  man  of  letters  as  such  should  be 
above  the  base  and  belittling,  and  dwell,  as  Mil- 
ton dwelt,  "  in  the  quiet  and  still  air  of  delightful 
studies."  Thus,  in  one  of  his  sonnets,  suggested 
by  the  reading  of  the  meditative  Wordsworth, 
he  writes : 

"  Far  'yond  this  narrow  parapet  of  Time, 
With  eyes  uplift,  the  poet's  soul  should  look 
Into  the  Endless  Promise,  nor  should  brook 
One  prying  doubt  to  shake  his  faith  sublime ; 
To  him  the  earth  is  ever  in  her  prime 
And  dewiness  of  morning ;  he  can  see 
Good  lying  hid  from  all  eternity, 
Within  the  teeming  womb  of  sin  and  crime; 
His  soul  should  not  be  cramped  by  any  bar; 
His  nobleness  should  be  so  godlike  high 
That  his  least  deed  is  perfect  as  a  star, 
His  common  look  majestic  as  the  sky, 
And  all  o'erflooded  with  a  light  from  far, 
Undimmed  by  clouds  of  weak  mortality." 

This  is  the  Lowellian  view  of  verse,  and  to- 
ward this  celestial  ideal  he  looked  and  wrought. 


JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL.  117 

In  such  poems  as  "  The  Cathedral  "  and  "  The 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  he  made  close  approxi- 
mation to  its  realization,  while  in  the  general 
tenor  of  his  lines  he  never  forgot  the  special 
sphere  in  which  he  was  working,  and  the  "  great 
cloud  of  witnesses"  by  which  he  "was  compassed 
about." 


BAYARD  TAYLOR 


119 


/oajja^rtU   V^/x^k 


1825-1878. 


CHAPTER     EIGHTH. 


BAYARD    TAYLOR. 


It  might  seem  at  first  a  little  strange  that,  in 
a  survey  of  the  more  reflective  American  poets, 
the  name  of  Taylor  should  be  at  all  included. 
We  think  of  him,  most  especially,  as  a  writer 
of  prose,  in  the  province  of  fiction,  journalism, 
travels,  letters,  and  critical  miscellany ;  as  the 
author  of  "  Hannah  Thurston,"  of  "  Views 
Afoot,"  and  "Studies  in  German  Literature"; 
and  yet  even  here  we  are  at  once  impressed  with 
the  uniform  gravity  of  bearing  and  style  that 
he  evinces,  which  characterizes  him  at  once  as  a 
meditative  writer.  Turning  to  his  verse,  we  are 
surprised,  perhaps,  at  its  variety  and  compass, 
as  it  appears  in  descriptive,  lyric,  dramatic,  and 
didactic  form — in  every  accepted  form,  indeed, 
save  that  of  the  distinctly  epic.  As  early  as 
1844,  before  he  had  reached  his  majority,  the 
first  collection  of  his  verse  appeared.  Other  col- 
123 


124         AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE    LYRICS. 

lections  were  prepared  and  published  in  due  suc- 
cession, such  as  "  Rhymes  of  Travel,"  "  A  Book 
of  Romances  and  Lyrics  and  Song,"  "Poems 
of  the  Orient,"  "  Poems  of  Home  and  Travel," 
"  Home  Pastorals,  Ballads,  and  Lyrics,"  with 
such  separate  poems  as  "  Lars,  a  Pastoral  of 
Norway,"  and  "The  Picture  of  St.  John";  his 
"  Local  Idylls  and  Ballads  of  the  Civil  War  "  re- 
vealing the  depth  and  intensity  of  his  loyalty  in 
the  face  of  such  strong  inducements  to  surrender 
it.  No  reader  can  run  over  this  list  of  descrip- 
tive and  idyllic  verse  without  being  impressed 
with  its  contemplative  type  and  purpose,  the 
didactic  element  in  its  best  form  being  every- 
where present.  It  was  this  specific  teaching 
quality  that  Taylor  possessed  and  aimed  to  ex- 
hibit, so  that,  from  first  to  last,  he  pens  his  poems 
not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  penning  them,  or  for 
any  distinct  artistic  effect,  as  thereby  to  diffuse 
sound  and  wholesome  principles,  and  advance 
the  cause  of  truth. 

His  great  work  as  a  translator  in  rendering 
Goethe's  "Faust"  to  English  readers  is  de- 
veloped along  the  same  high  line  of  serious  en- 
deavor, while  his  three  more  elaborate  dramatic 
poems  are  characteristically  ethical  in  theme,  de- 


BAYARD    TAYLOR.  120 

velopment,  and  purpose.  In  a  word,  the  verse 
is  essentially  reflective,  as  much  so,  indeed,  as 
is  that  of  any  of  his  great  contemporaries,  and 
so  persuasively  so  as  to  make  it  unintelligible 
to  those  who  examine  it  from  any  other  point 
of  view.  With  this  didactic  feature,  moreover, 
there  is  seen  in  all  such  a  clear  and  emotive 
quality  that  interest  is  added  to  instruction,  and 
all  the  finer  feelings  of  the  heart  awakened. 
Seldom  has  a  poet  succeeded  in  being  at  one 
and  the  same  time  so  serious  and  so  attractive, 
so  that  in  such  selections  as  "  Lars  "  or  "  St. 
John"  or  "  Amram's  Wooing"  or  the  "Ode 
to  Shelley,"  deep  emotion  is  under  the  safe  re- 
strictions of  reason,  and  reason,  under  the  more 
genial  and  generous  influence  of  feeling.  Of  the 
first  of  his  dramas,  "  The  Masque  of  the  Gods," 
the  author  tells  us  that  his  chief  purpose  is  to 
show  "  the  gradual  development  of  man's  con- 
ception of  God."  Of  the  second  one,  "  The 
Prophet,"  he  writes  that  he  aims  "  to  represent 
phases  of  spiritual  development  and  their  external 
results  which  are  hardly  possible  in  any  other 
country  than  ours  "  ;  while  of  the  last  and  great- 
est drama,  '•  Prince  Deukalion,"  he  states  :  "  The 
central  design  or  germinal  cause  of  the  poem  is 


126         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

to  picture  forth  the  struggle  of  man  to  reach  the 
highest,  justest,  happiest,  and  hence  most  per- 
fect conditions  of  human  life  on  this  planet." 

Nothing  could  more  clearly  evince  the  pro- 
foundly meditative  temper  of  Taylor's  mind  and 
poetic  work  than  this  conception  and  elabo- 
ration of  his  three  dramatic  poems  along  semi- 
religious  lines,  and  with  reference  to  the  great 
problems  of  human  life  and  destiny. 

In  stating,  by  way  of  preface,  the  argument 
of  this  last  work — "  Prince  Deukalion,"  he  al- 
ludes to  "  the  passing  away  of  the  classic  faith 
and  the  emergence  of  Christianity,"  and  predicts 
an  "  era  of  which  no  simply  loving  and  believing 
creature  of  God  can  fail  to  discover  the  prophecy 
within  his  own  nature."  He  takes  up  in  turn 
the  sublime  questions  of  God  and  truth  and  im- 
mortality, and  seeks  in  poetic  form  to  embody 
and  express  some  of  the  soul's  deepest  yearnings. 
The  closing  lines,  as  spoken  by  Prometheus,  are 
thus  significant : 

"  For  Life,  whose  source  not  here  began, 
Must  fill  the  utmost  sphere  of  Man, 
And,  so  expanding,  lifted  be 
Along  the  line  of  God's  decree, 
To  find  in  endless  growth  all  good, 
In  endless  toil  beatitude," 


BAYARD    TAYLOR.  127 

In  seeking  for  specific  evidences  and  exam- 
ples of  Taylor's  more  meditative  verse,  we  turn 
from  his  dramatic  lines  to  the  various  collections 
of  his  lyrics,  and,  first  of  all,  to  his  "  Poems  of 
the  Orient."  "  When  I  read  these  poems,"  writes 
Stoddard,  "  I  think  that  Bayard  Taylor  has  cap- 
tured the  poetic  secret  of  the  East  as  no  Eng- 
lish-writing poet  but  Byron  has."  The  very 
name  of  the  collection  suggests  their  semi-re- 
ligious and  reflective  character,  being  a  coun- 
terpart in  verse  of  his  prose  papers  on  Eastern 
lands  and  peoples.  Some  of  the  titles  are  as 
follows :  "  The  Temptation  of  Hassan  Ben 
Khaled,"  "  Arab  Prayer,"  "  Amram's  Wooing," 
"  The  Angel  of  Patience,"  "  Bedouin  Song," 
"  The  Birth  of  the  Prophet,"  "  The  Arab  to  the 
Palm,"  "The  Mystery,"  and  "To  the  Nile." 
One  of  these  poems,  "  The  Shekh,"  from  the 
Arabic,  deserves  citation  in  full : 

"  Not  a  single  star  is  twinkling 

Through  the  wilderness  of  cloud ; 
On  the  mountain,  in  the  darkness, 
Stands  the  Shekh,  and  prays  aloud  : 

"  '  God,  who  kindlest  aspirations, 
Kindlest  hope  the  heart  within, 
God,  who  promisest  Thy  mercy, 
Wiping  out  the  debt  of  sin, 


128         AMERICA X  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

"  '  God,  protect  me  in  the  darkness, 

When  the  awful  thunders  roll : 
Evil  walks  the  world  unsleeping, 
Evil  sleeps  within  my  soul. 

"  '  Keep  my  mind  from  every  impulse 
Which  from  Thee  may  turn  aside; 
Keep  my  heart  from  every  passion 
By  Thy  breath  unsanctified. 

"  '  God,  preserve  me  from  a  spirit 

Which  Thy  knowledge  cannot  claim  ; 
From  a  knee  that  bendeth  never 
In  the  worship  of  Thy  name; 

"'  '  From  a  heart  whose  every  feeling 
Is  not  wholly  vowed  to  Thee ; 
From  an  eye  that,  through  its  weeping, 
Thy  compassion  cannot  see  ; 

"  '  From  a  prayer  that  goes  not  upward 
In  the  darkness  and  the  fear, 
From  the  soul's  impassioned  center, 
Seeking  access  at  Thy  ear. 

"  '  When  the  night  of  evil  threatens, 
Throw  Thy  shelter  over  me  ; 
Let  my  spirit  feel  Thy  presence, 
And  my  days  be  full  of  Thee.'  " 

This  reads  almost  like  a  hymn  from  Watts  or 
Heber,  reverent,  trustful,  and  tender,  pervaded 
by  that  spirit  of  the  Orient  which,  with  some 
admixture  of  superstition  and  possible  bigotry, 
is  yet  worshipful  and  devout. 


BAYARD    TAYLOR.  129 

In  moments  of  lighter  and  yet  contemplative 
strain,  he  sings  thus  in  his  lines  "  In  the  Mea- 
dows "  : 

"  I  lie  in  the  summer  meadows, 
In  the  meadows  all  alone, 
With  the  infinite  sky  above  me, 
And  the  sun  on  his  midday  throne. 

"  The  infinite  bliss  of  Nature 
I  feel  in  every  vein  ; 
The  light  and  the  life  of  summer 
Blossom  in  heart  and  brain. 

"  But,  darker  than  any  shadow- 
By  thunder-clouds  unfurled, 
The  awful  truth  arises, 

That  Death  is  in  the  world." 

So,  in  the  sennet  beginning: 

"  The  soul  goes  forth,  and  finds  no  resting-place 
On  the  wide  breast  of  Life's  unquiet  sea 
But  in  the  heart  of  man." 

So,  in  his  "  In  Articulo  Mortis,"  he  writes  in 
most  emphatic  protest  against  all  popish  proffer 
of  pardon  in  the  hour  of  direst  need : 

"  Nay,  Priest!  nay; 
Stand  not  between  me  and  the  fading  light 
Of  my  last  hour  ;  I  know  my  soul  is  weighed 
With  many  sins  ;  but  even  knowing  this,    .   .    . 
I  will  not  lean  upon  another's  arm, 


130         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Or  bid  a  human  intercessor  plead 

My  perilous  cause ;  but  I  will  stagger  on 

Beneath  my  sins  unto  the  feet  of  God." 

One  of  the  closing  poems  of  this  collection, 
entitled  "  The  Mid-watch,"  is  unique  in  Ameri- 
can verse,  both  in  its  title  and  its  peculiar  lyri- 
cal excellence : 

"  I  pace  the  deck  in  the  dead  of  night, 
When  the  moon  and  the  starlight  fail, 
And  the  cordage  creaks  to  the  lazy  swells, 
And  heavily  flaps  the  sail." 

In  fine,  one  scarcely  knows  the  salient  char- 
acteristics and  innermost  spirit  of  Taylor  who 
has  not  read  and  re-read  these  lyrics  of  the 
Orient,  in  their  picture  of  the  weird  and  semi- 
historical  life  of  Arab  and  Moor.  As  we  read 
them,  and  become  absorbed  for  the  time  in  their 
teachings  and  spiritual  temper,  we  forget  that 
we  are  reading  the  lines  of  Taylor,  the  novelist 
and  journalist  and  traveler  and  literary  critic  and 
acute  Anglo- German  author.  We  recall,  how- 
ever, the  fact  that  he  was  constitutionally  con- 
templative ;  that  much  of  his  travel  was  in  the 
lands  of  the  Orient;  that  his  "  Letters"  to  his 
wife  and  others  are  full  of  a  deep  and  tender 
pathos  ;  that  his  Teutonic  studies  and  affinities 


BAYARD    TAYLOR.  131 

induced  in  him  an  intellectual  gravity  ;  and  that, 
even  in  his  work  as  a  critic,  he  always  discovered 
and  emphasized  those  underlying  moral  convic- 
tions that  make  authors  and  literatures  what 
they  are.  Thus  interpreted,  we  come  at  length 
to  look  in  his  verse  for  clear  indications  of  the 
presence  of  the  meditative.  In  his  collection, 
"Home  Pastorals,  Ballads,  Lyrics,  and  Odes,"  the 
somewhat  severe  sobriety  of  the  Orient  poems 
gives  place  to  a  more  flexible  and  attractive  ex- 
pression of  feeling,  as  he  sings  of  "  The  Holly- 
tree,"  "The  Burden  of  the  Day,"  "The  Sun- 
shine of  the  Gods,"  "  In  my  Vineyard,"  and 
"  The  Guests  at  Night."  Thus,  in  "  The  Bur- 
den of  the  Day,"  we  read: 

' '  Who  shall  rise  and  cast  away 
First,  the  burden  of  the  day? 
Who  assert  his  place,  and  teach 
Lighter  labor,  nobler  speech, 
Standing  firm,  erect,  and  strong, 
Proud  as  freedom,  free  as  song? 

Higher  paths  there  are  to  tread; 
Fresher  fields  around  us  spread; 
Other  flames  of  sun  and  star 
Flash  at  hand  and  lure  afar ; 
Larger  manhood  might  we  share, 
Surer  fortune,  did  we  dare!" 


132         AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Here  we  mark  a  freer,  fuller  note,  as  if,  in- 
deed, from  the  impassioned  pen  of  Whittier,  as 
he  pleads  for  truth  and  right. 

So,  in  his  "  Casa  Guidi  Windows,"  he  sings  in 
plaintive  strain  of  Mrs.  Browning: 

"  The  quiet  brow  ;  the  face  so  frail  and  fair 
For  such  a  voice  of  Sony;  the  steady  eye, 
Where  shone  the  spirit  fated  to  outwear 
Its  fragile  house;  and  in  her  features  lie 
The  soft  half-shadows  of  her  drifting  hair." 

So,  of  Bryant  he  beautifully  sings : 

"  For  he,  our  earliest  minstrel,  fills 

The  land  with  echoes  sweet  and  long, 
Gives  language  to  her  silent  hills, 
And  bids  her  rivers  move  to  song. 

"  He  sings  of  mountains  and  of  streams, 
Of  storied  field  and  haunted  dale, 
Yet  hears  a  voice  through  all  his  dreams, 
Which  says,  '  The  good  shall  yet  prevail.'  " 

Of  his"  Gettysburg  Ode  "  suffice  it  to  say  that 
it  is  confessedly  one  of  the  few  historic  national 
lyrics  of  English  verse,  as  it  closes  so  sublimely  : 

"  Take  them,  0  God,  our  brave, 

The  glad  fulfilleFS  of  Thy  dread  decree, 
Who  grasped  the  sword  for  Peace,  and  smote  to  save, 
And,  dying  here  for  Freedom,  also  died  for  Thee." 


BAYARD    TAYLOR.  133 

Thus  the  verse  runs  on  in  drama,  description, 
narrative,  pastoral,  sonnet,  and  general  lyric, 
and  always  marked  by  a  kind  of  Senecan  dignity 
and  seriousness,  well  befitting  the  poet  himself, 
the  high  themes  he  treated,  and  the  final  pur- 
pose of  his  writing. 

It  was,  indeed,  largely  because  of  this  govern- 
ing desire  as  an  author  to  be  helpful  in  his  au- 
thorship to  those  for  whom  he  wrote,  that  he  ever 
keeps  above  the  lower  level  of  the  flippant  and 
trivial,  on  the  high  plane  of  sober  endeavor  and 
a  reverent  study  of  God  and  man. 

It  is  thus  that  Stedman  writes  so  appreciatively 
of  him :  "  To  think  of  him  is  to  recall  a  per- 
son larger  in  make  and  magnanimity  than  the 
common  sort,  a  man  of  buoyancy,  hopefulness, 
sweetness  of  temper,  stainless  in  morals,  and  of 
an  honesty  so  natural  that  he  could  not  be  sur- 
prised into  an  untruth  or  the  commission  of  a 
mean  act."  "  Life  for  me,"  says  the  poet  him- 
self, "  is  the  making  of  all  that  is  possible  out 
of  such  powers  as  I  may  have." 

The  powers  he  had  were  of  no  inferior  order. 
No  American  writer  in  prose  or  verse  has  de- 
voted himself  with  more  intensity  of  purpose  to 
making  the  most  and  best  of  that  which  God 


134        AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

had  given  him,  and  these  are  the  authors  of 
whom  it  may  be  said,  as  we  read  in  Taylor's 
"  Bedouin  Song,"  that  they  will  live 

"  Till  the  sun  grows  cold, 
And  the  stars  are  old, 
And  the  leaves  of  the  judgment-book  unfold." 


OLIVER   WENDELL    HOLMES. 


135 


/ftarw  Jfe^&/&<rfffi™j. 


i8oq-i8q4. 


CHAPTER   NINTH. 

OLIVER    WENDELL    HOLMES. 

In  such  a  writer  and  poet  as  Holmes  it  might 
be  argued,  presumptively,  that  the  reflective  fea- 
ture would  be  less  prominent  than  in  Bryant, 
Emerson,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  and  Lowell, 
while  an  historical  examination  of  his  verse  fully 
confirms  this  presupposition.  The  main  cur- 
rents of  his  mind  set  in  other  directions ;  his 
prevailing  themes  were  of  a  different  order ; 
his  literary  ambitions,  preferences,  and  purposes 
were,  in  the  main,  different ;  so  that  his  literary 
constituency  were  led  to  expect  from  his  pen 
prose  and  verse  in  accordance  with  such  a  con- 
stitutional bias.  All  this  is  true,  and  yet  any 
reader  of  Holmes  fails  to  read  his  lines  aright, 
or  to  read  aright  between  the  lines,  who  fails  to 
find  a  meditative  element  fundamentally  pres- 
ent and  potent,  not  so  conspicuous  and  demon- 
139 


140        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

strative  as  in  other  American  poets,  not  so 
often  seen,  perhaps,  but  still  existent  and  real, 
and  all  the  more  impressive,  at  times,  by  reason 
of  its  subdued  and  reserved  character,  and  espe- 
cially by  reason  of  its  close  relation  to  other 
forms  of  verse  so  radically  different.  Nor  is 
the  explanation  far  to  find :  Holmes  was  a  poet 
of  man  and  human  life ;  of  the  world  about  him 
and  the  world  within  him  ;  and,  hence,  some- 
what of  the  world  above  him  ;  a  poet  of  his 
own  experience  and  of  that  of  his  fellows,  in 
all  the  wealth  and  width  of  that  experience  ;  a 
versatile,  many-sided  delineator  of  human  in- 
stincts, passions,  and  ideals,  so  that,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  he  must  enter  all  avenues  of 
lyric  expression,  strike  all  the  chords  of  the 
heart  of  man,  and  treat  of  God  and  the  world 
and  human  life  and  destiny.  As  he  himself  in- 
dicates, he  has  given  us  "  Songs  in  Many  Keys," 
singing  now  a  note  of  gladness  and  now  a  note 
of  more  pensive  tone,  each  heard  in  its  fitting 
place  and  time,  and  together  filling  out  the 
completed  choral  strain.  Moreover,  Holmes, 
as  the  son  of  Rev.  Abiel  Holmes,  pastor  of  the 
Congregational  Church  at  Cambridge,  and  au- 
thor of  "The   Memoirs   of  the  French  Protes- 


OLIVER    WENDELL   HOLMES.  1-41 

tants,"  had  an  inherited  tendency  to  the  more 
devout  and  reflective  side  of  verse ;  his  volun- 
tary passage  from  Congregationalism  to  Uni- 
tarianism  being,  as  he  conceived  it,  a  transition 
from  the  narrower  to  the  broader  in  matters  of 
faith,  giving  him  a  wider  range  and  larger  lib- 
erty in  the  expression  of  his  meditations  on  God 
and  man.  In  his  poem  "  The  School-boy,"  as 
in  his  "  Harvard  Anniversary  Poem  of  '86,"  he 
alludes  to  this  change  of  front,  the  occasion  of 
it,  and  its  natural  results.  Whatever  his  doc- 
trinal or  denominational  attitude,  however,  there 
was  always  a  deep  substratum  of  sober  thought 
and  life,  revealing  itself  often  when  least  antici- 
pated, and,  when  expressed  in  unison  with  the 
lighter  and  more  playful  forms  of  verse,  produc- 
ing an  effect  altogether  unique  and  impressive. 
A  more  specific  inquiry  as  to  the  particular 
modes  in  which  this  contemplative  element 
manifests   itself   will   be   of   interest. 

The  poetry  of  Holmes  in  its  entirety  might 
be  classified  into  three  generic  divisions,  as 
national,  humorous,  and  meditative,  this  last 
division  being  fully  as  characteristic  as  any, 
and  expressed  in  various  subordinate  forms. 
As  first  in  order,  we  note  his  "  Hymns,"  which 


142         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

in  themselves  constitute  a  list  of  some  dozen 
titles.  Two  of  these  are  of  special  interest  as 
included  in  our  American  hymnology  for  use  in 
sacred  worship.  The  one  is  called  "A  Hymn 
of  Trust,"  as  it  reads: 

"  O  Love  Divine,  that  stooped  to  share 
Our  sharpest  pang,  our  bitterest  tear, 
On  Thee  we  cast  each  earth-born  care, 
We  smile  at  pain  when  Thou  art  near!" 

The  other  is  called  "A  Sun-day  Hymn,"  as  it 
reads : 

"  Lord  of  all  being!  throned  afar, 
Thy  glory  flames  from  sun  and  star, 
Center  and  soul  of  every  sphere, 
Yet  to  each  loving  heart  how  near!" 

Each  of  these  hymns,  it  is  interesting  to  note, 
was  published  in  "  The  Professor  at  the  Break- 
fast-Table," "  hymns,"  writes  Duffield,  "  among 
our  most  acceptable  and  admirable  Christian 
lyrics."  It  was  in  connection  with  the  second 
of  these  lyrics  that  the  author  invited  all  his 
readers  "  to  join  in  singing  [inwardly]  this  hymn 
to  the  Source  of  the  light  we  all  need  to  lead 
us."  Closely  connected  in  spirit  with  these 
two  selections  is  what  is  called  "  The  Parting 
Hymn": 


OLIVER    WENDELL   HOLMES.  143 

"  Father  of  mercies,  heavenly  Friend, 
We  seek  Thy  gracious  throne ; 
To  Thee  our  faltering  prayers  ascend, 
Our  fainting  hearts  are  known!" 

So,  the  lyric  entitled  "  The  Army  Hymn  "  : 

"  O  Lord  of  hosts!  almighty  King!" 

In  addition  are  such  as  the  "  Hymn  after  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation,"  "  Hymn  for  the 
Fair  at  Chicago,"  "  For  the  Dedication  of  Me- 
morial Hall  at  Cambridge,"  "  For  the  Laying 
of  the  Corner-stone  of  Harvard  Memorial  Hall," 
"  For  the  Two  Hundredth  Anniversary  of 
King's  Chapel,"  "  At  the  Dedication  of  the 
Holmes  Hospital  at  Hudson,"  "  The  Word  of 
Promise,"  "  At  the  Funeral  Services  of  Charles 
Sumner,"  "  For  the  Inauguration  of  the  Statue 
of  Governor  Andrew,"  and  the  "  Hymn  for  the 
Class-meeting,"  one  of  his  choicest  lyrics,  as  it 
opens : 

"  Thou  gracious  Power,  whose  mercy  lends 
The  light  of  home,  the  smile  of  friends, 
Our  gathered  flock  Thine  arms  infold 
As  in  the  peaceful  days  of  old." 

In  fine,  there  are  not  a  few  of  these  poems, 
under   the    title    of    songs,    odes,   tributes,  and 


144         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

sonnets,  which  in  character  and  form  are  so 
strictly  reflective  that  they  could  safely  be 
classed  under  the  division  of  hymns,  surcharged 
as  they  are  with  a  kind  of  devotional  and  spirit- 
ual fervor.  In  addition  to  hymns,  there  is  a 
second  class  of  meditative  poems  that  might  be 
termed  "  Verses  for  Occasions,"  written  at  the 
time  for  special  purposes,  and  embracing  much 
of  that  commemorative  or  reminiscent  verse  in 
the  composition  of  which  Holmes  was  often  at 
his  best.  Such  are  his  loving  tributes  to  the 
great  American  authors  and  benefactors  of  his 
time,  in  which  he  voices  his  own  personal  grati- 
tude, and  congratulates  American  letters  and 
the  American  people  as  the  inheritors  of  their 
fame.  Thus,  in  his  poem  "  Bryant's  Seventieth 
Birthday,"  he  sings  in  grateful  strain: 

"  This  was  the  first  sweet  singer  in  the  cage 
Of  our  close-woven  life.      A  new-born  age 
Claims  in  his  vesper  song  its  heritage. 
How  can  we  praise  the  verse  whose  music  flows 
With  solemn  cadence  and  majestic  close, 
Pure  as  the  dew  that  filters  through  the  rose? 
How  shall  we  thank  him  that  in  evil  days 
He  faltered  never;  nor  for  blame  nor  praise 
Nor  time  nor  party  shamed  his  earlier  lays?  " 

So,  in  his  lines  to  Longfellow : 


OLIVER    WENDELL    HOLMES.  145 

"  Ah,  gentlest  soul!  how  gracious,  how  benign 
Breathes  through  our  troubled  life  that  voice  of  thine." 

So,  to  Whittier,  on  his  eightieth  birthday,  he 
writes  in  loving"  salutation,  as  also  "  In  Memory 
of  Lincoln,"  and  in  sorrow  for  the  smitten  nation  ■ 

"  Dear  Lord,  with  pitying  eye  behold 

This  martyr  generation, 
Which  Thou,  through  trials  manifold, 

Art  showing  Thy  salvation; 
Oh,  let  the  blood  by  murder  spilt 
Wash  out  Thy  stricken  children's  guilt 

And  sanctify  our  nation ! 
Our  hearts  lie  buried  in  the  dust 

With  him  so  true  and  tender, 
The  patriot's  stay,  the  people's  trust 

The  shield  of  the  offender : 
Yet  every  murmuring  voice  is  still, 
As,  bowing  to  Thy  sovereign  will, 

Our  best-loved  we  surrender." 

Thus  these  memorial  tributes  continue,  to 
Burns,  to  Garfield,  Halleck,  Everett,  Moore, 
Lowell,  Washington,  Mrs.  Stowe,  and  others,  al- 
ternating between  eulogy  and  elegy  ;  emphasiz- 
ing the  reflective  and  the  pensive  elements  of  life, 
and  expressing  in  varied  form  many  of  the  finest 
forms  of  idyllic  verse.  Nothing  that  Holmes 
has  written,  in  prose  or  song,  more  clearly  re- 


146        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

veals  his  sensitive  and  affectionate  nature,  the 
firm  hold  that  he  had  upon  the  friends  of  his 
earlier  and  middle  life,  and  how  easy  it  was  for 
him  for  the  time  being  to  subordinate  the  pro- 
fessor and  the  poet  to  the  man  and  the  friend. 
So  true  is  this  that  even  in  his  national  and  hu- 
morous verse  the  more  sedate  and  meditative 
features  of  his  character  come  into  prominence, 
as  in  "  Old  Ironsides,"  "  Robinson  of  Leyden," 
"  An  Appeal  for  the  Old  South,"  "  The  Last 
Charge,"  "  God  Save  the  Flag,"  and  "  A  Voice 
of  the  Loyal  North." 

By  far  the  most  extended  list  of  his  medita- 
tive poems,  however,  is  found  in  those  special 
lyrics  which  have  been  well  characterized  as 
"  Poems  of  Moral  and  Spiritual  Beauty,"  suf- 
fused with  genuine  sentiment,  with  a  deep  emo- 
tive and  ethical  purpose,  and  which,  to  the  ob- 
serving and  sympathetic  reader,  unbosom,  as 
nothing  else  can,  the  innermost  life  and  spirit  of 
the  author.  Among  these  rich  and  choice  se- 
lections any  distinctions  are  almost  invidious,  so 
uniform  is  their  poetic  merit  and  so  high  the 
purpose  that  pervades  them.  If  forced  to  a  dis- 
crimination we  should  cite  the  following  :  "  Un- 
der the  Violets,"   "  The   Crooked   Foot-path," 


OLIVER    W EX  DELL   HOLMES.  l-i7 


"  The  Voiceless,"  "  Homesick  in  Heaven,"  "  The 
Secret  of  the  Stars,"  "  Sun  and  Shadow,"  "  The 
Last  Look,"  "  The  Chambered  Nautilus,"  "  Our 
Limitations,"  "The  Iron  Gate,"  "The  Living 
Temple,"  "  A  Mother's  Secret,"  "  An  Old  Year's 
Song,"  and  "The  Silent  Melody." 

From  this  rare  anthology  an  occasional  cita- 
tion must  suffice.      Thus,  in  "  The  Voiceless  "  : 


"  Nay,  grieve  not  for  the  dead  alone, 

Whose  song  has  told  their  heart's  sad  story ; 
Weep  for  the  voiceless,  who  have  known 

The  cross  without  the  crown  of  glory! 
If  singing  breath  or  echoing  chord 

To  every  hidden  pang  were  given, 
What  endless  melodies  were  poured, 

As  sad  as  earth,  as  sweet  as  heaven!" 

In  "  Our  Limitations  "  we  read: 

"  We  trust  and  fear,  we  question  and  believe, 
From  life's  dark  threads  a  trembling  faith  to  weave. 
Eternal  Truth !  beyond  our  hopes  and  fears 
Sweep  the  vast  orbits  of  Thy  myriad  spheres!" 

So,  in  "  The  Iron  Gate  "  : 

"If  word  of  mine  another's  gloom  has  brightened, 

Through  my  dumb  lips  the  heaven-sent  message  came 
If  hand  of  mine  another's  task  has  lightened, 
It  felt  the  guidance  that  it  dares  not  claim." 


148         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

In  "  The  Living  Temple  "  he  sings,  as  a  devout 
Christian  scientist  and  in  loftiest  strain  : 

"  Not  in  the  world  of  light  alone, 
Where  God  has  built  His  blazing  throne, 
Nor  yet  alone  in  earth  below, 
With  belted  seas  that  come  and  go, 
And  endless  isles  of  sunlit  green 
Is  all  thy  Maker's  glory  seen  ; 
Look  in  upon  thy  wondrous  frame, 
Eternal  wisdom  still  the  same!    .    .   . 
O  Father!  grant  Thy  love  divine 
To  make  these  mystic  temples  Thine! 
When  wasting  age  and  wearying  strife 
Have  sapped  the  leaning  walls  of  life, 
When  darkness  gathers  over  all, 
And  the  last  tottering  pillars  fall, 
Take  the  poor  dust  Thy  mercy  warms, 
And  mold  it  into  heavenly  forms!" 

Such  are  some  examples  of  this  wealth  of 
lyric  verse  on  its  contemplative  side,  expressing 
some  of  the  sweetest  poetic  sentiments  that 
Holmes  has  given  us,  and,  even  on  the  strictly 
literary  and  artistic  side,  yielding  not  a  whit  to 
anything  that  he  has  written.  Readers  of  Holmes 
who  think  of  him  as  merely  an  after-dinner 
poet  or  a  maker  of  jolly  rhymes  for  festivals 
and  class  reunions,  or  as  the  author  only  of 
"Aunt   Tabitha,"   "Bill  and  Joe,"   and '"The 


OLIVER    HEX  DELI.    HOLMES.  149 

Broomstick  Train,"  quite  mistake,  after  all,  his 
real  temper  and  merit,  and  unwittingly  lose  a 
large  part  of  that  personal  satisfaction  that  comes 
from  a  closer  familiarity  with  his  more  subdued 
and  sensitive  verse.  And  this  leads  us  to  note 
that  the  great  characteristic  of  his  poetry  as 
meditative  is  its  mental  and  moral  wholesome- 
ness ;  its  soundness,  sanity,  and  good  sense ;  its 
conspicuous  freedom  from  the  morose,  ascetic, 
and  revolting;  and  from  those  one-sided  and 
hence  defective  views  which  mar  the  unity  of  so 
many  gifted  authors  in  modern  prose  and  verse. 
Meditative  verse,  from  its  very  etymology  (med- 
itavi),  means  thoughtful  verse,  sentiment  marked 
by  sense  and  some  good  degree  of  mental  life, 
while  it  is  equally  suggestive  to  note  that  the 
word  "  meditation  "  is  from  the  same  verbal  base 
as  mcdcri,  meaning  "  to  heal  "  ;  so  that  we  have 
here  the  two  ideas  of  sanity  and  soundness, 
thought  in  healthful  forms,  free  from  the  morbid 
and  injurious,  and  directly  contributive  to  the 
best  results  in  mind  and  character.  A  recent 
writer  in  the  "  Forum  "  emphasizes  the  neces- 
sity of  a  healthful  tone  in  American  Letters. 
Whittier,  in  a  review  of  Holmes's  poems,  pur- 
posely  speaks    of    mirth     and    medicine    as    a 


150        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

happy  combination  illustrated  in  his  verse.  In 
no  American  or  English  bard  have  these  two  ele- 
ments been  so  aptly  conjoined,  so  that  the  sum- 
total  effect  has  been  healing  to  the  spirit,  and 
provocative  of  every  wholesome  impulse  and 
tendency. 

In  meditative  verse  such  a  characteristic  is 
especially  notable  and  helpful,  mainly  because  of 
the  comparative  ease  with  which  such  a  type 
of  verse  degenerates  into  the  unduly  sedate  and 
serious. 

Holmes  has  shown  us  most  conclusively  that 
verse,  because  reflective,  need  not  be  revolting; 
that  sober  suggestion  may  be  couched  in  the 
most  attractive  forms ;  that  rational  pleasantry 
and  good  cheer  have  their  appropriate  place  in 
such  an  order  of  poetry,  and  that  it  is  the  envi- 
able office  of  the  lyrist,  on  the  contemplative 
side,  to  gladden,  inspire,  and  encourage  the  hu- 
man heart,  and  lift  the  life  of  his  fellows  toward 
God  and  all  that  tends  to  goodness. 

It  is  by  the  perusal  of  just  such  poetry  as 
this — true,  tender,  and  ennobling — that  many  a 
weary  hour  may  be  enlivened  and  enriched. 


HARRIET  BEECHER  STOWE. 


151 


^^YBa^^^ 


lSl2- 


CHAPTER    TENTH. 

HARRIET    BEECHER    STOWE. 

"  No  one,"  writes  Mr.  Stedman,  "  can  enter 
upon  the  most  cursory  review  of  our  literature 
without  being  struck  by  the  share  which  wo- 
men have  had  in  its  production.  A  sisterhood 
of  song  has  even  in  America  a  just  and  distinc- 
tive regard."  To  the  same  effect,  and  by  way  of 
prophecy,  Professor  Richardson  writes:  "  There 
can  be  no  question  that  the  work  of  women  in 
American  literature  is  hereafter  to  command  a 
study  as  deep  as  that  bestowed  upon  the  work 
of  men."  While  we  have  no  American  author- 
ess of  the  rank  of  Mrs.  Browning  in  verse  or 
George  Eliot  in  fiction,  we  have  in  our  earlier 
and  developing  literature  a  goodly  number  of 
women  who  have  done  and  are  doing  a  most 
commendable  work  in  authorship,  and  so  in- 
155 


156        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE    LYRICS. 

creasingly  distinctive  as  to  demand  the  special 
study  of  the  critic. 

If  we  inquire  as  to  the  particular  provinces  in 
which  our  authoresses  have  done  their  best  work, 
we  shall  not  find  them,  naturally,  in  the  realm 
of  historical  and  philosophic  criticism,  nor,  in- 
deed, in  that  of  epic  and  dramatic  verse,  but 
rather  in  the  wide  departments  of  descriptive 
miscellany,  fiction,  and  lyric  verse.  It  is  signifi- 
cantly to  the  last  of  these  departments,  the  lyric, 
that  our  attention  is  directed,  as  illustrated  in 
such  collections  as  Mrs.  Sigourney's  "  Moral 
Pieces  in  Prose  and  Verse  "  and  Celia  Thaxter's 
"Driftweed."  Still  more  to  our  purpose,  it  is 
pertinent  to  state  that  it  is,  most  of  all,  in  the 
domain  of  the  meditative  lyric  that  American 
poetesses,  as  also  British,  have  won  distinction, 
as  there  is  no  order  of  verse  which,  in  its  deep 
and  delicate  sensibilities,  is  more  thoroughly 
germane  to  the  nature  and  ideals  of  woman. 
Emotional  verse,  especially  in  the  line  of  the  re- 
flective and  pensive,  is  her  chosen  sphere,  and, 
indeed,  absolutely  essential  to  the  highest  ex- 
pression of  her  genius.  Such  a  compend  as  the 
recently  prepared  "  Library  of  American  Liter- 
ature "  or  Griswold's  "  Female  Poets  of  Amer- 


HARRIET  B  EEC  HER   STOIVE.  157 

ica  "  will  furnish  abundant  examples  illustrative 
of  the  character  and  spirit  of  our  contemplative 
verse. 

The  names  and  poems  of  some  of  these  lyrists 
may  be  cited  and  sufficient  extracts  quoted  to 
give  to  the  reader  the  desire  to  multiply  them 
at  pleasure.  Thus  from  the  pen  of  the  gifted 
Celia  Thaxter  we  note  such  a  title  as  "  The 
Watch  of  Boon  Island,"  beginning: 

"  They  crossed  the  lonely  and  lamenting  sea." 

One  of  her  poems,  entitled  "  Song,"  is  full  of 
tender  beauty  : 

"  We  sail  toward  evening's  lonely  star 

That  trembles  in  the  tender  blue  ; 
One  single  cloud,  a  dusky  bar, 

Burnt  with  dull  carmine  through  and  through, 
Slow-smoldering  in  the  summer  sky, 

Lies  low  along  the  fading  west. 
How  sweet  to  watch  its  splendors  die, 

Wave-cradled  thus  and  wind-caressed! 

"  How  like  a  dream  are  earth  and  heaven, 

Star-beam  and  darkness,  sky  and  sea; 
Thy  face,  pale  in  the  shadowy  even, 

Thy  quiet  eyes  that  gaze  on  me! 
Oh,  realize  the  moment's  charm, 

Thou  dearest!  we  are,  at  life's  best, 
Folded  in  God's  encircling  arms, 

Wave- cradled  thus  and  wind-caressed." 


158         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Mrs.  Louise  Chandler  Moulton  makes  selec- 
tion almost  invidious  among  such  choice  exam- 
ples as  "  The  House  of  Death,"  "  To-night,"  and 
"  We  Lay  Us  Down  to  Sleep."  We  quote  from 
the  last  a  stanza  or  two : 

' '  We  lay  us  down  to  sleep, 
And  leave  to  God  the  rest, 
Whether  to  wake  and  weep 
Or  wake  no  more  be  best. 

"  Some  faithful  friends  we've  found, 
But  they  who  love  us  best, 
When  we  are  underground, 
Will  laugh  on  with  the  rest. 

"  No  task  have  we  begun 

But  other  hands  can  take ; 
No  work  beneath  the  sun 

For  which  we  need  to  wake." 

Of  similar  reflective  pathos  and  beauty  are 
some  of  the  lyrics  of  Mrs.  Harriet  Prescott  Spof- 
ford,  such  as  "  A  Sigh  "  and  "  Magdalen," 
"  Fantasia,  "  and  that  exquisite  production, 
"  Music  in  the  Night": 

"  When  stars  pursue  their  solemn  flight, 
Oft  in  the  middle  of  the  night 
A  strain  of  music  visits  me, 
Hushed  in  a  moment  silverly: 


HARRIET  BE  EC  HER   STOWE.  159 

Such  rich  and  rapturous  strains  as  make 
The  very  soul  of  silence  ache 
With  longing  for  the  melody." 

Mrs.  Piatt's  "Why  Should  We  Care?" 
11  Transfigured,"  and  "  His  Share  and  Mine,"  are 
of  the  same  deep  and  pensive  pathos,  breaking 
out  at  times  into  something  like  poetic  passion. 

"  If  sand  is  in  the  South,  frost  in  the  North, 

And  sorrow  everywhere  and  passionate  yearning, 
If  stars  fade  from  the  skies,  if  men  go  forth 

From  their  own  thresholds  and  make  no  returning, 
Why  should  we  care?  " 

Mrs.  Mary  Mapes  Dodge,  in  her  "  Two  Mys- 
teries," "  The  Stars,"  "  Infoldings,"  and  "  Shad- 
ow Evidence,"  sounds  the  same  subjective  strain. 

Miss  Phelps  (Mrs.  Ward),  in  her  "Songs  of 
the  Silent  World,' J  has  sounded  as  clear  and 
sweet  a  note  as  any  of  her  sex  in  this  particular 
species  of  American  lyrics,  as  in  "  An  Autumn 
Violet  "  and  other  selections.  So,  in  the  deeply 
religious  lines  of  the  Carys,  Alice  and  Phoebe, 
and  of  the  Goodales,  Elaine  and  Dora,  poetic 
genius  and  art  combine  to  furnish  a  well-nigh 
perfect  product,  as  seen  in  such  specimens  as 
"  Nearer  Home,"  "Ashes  of  Roses,"  and  "  Even- 
tide."   Helen  Jackson,  in  her  "  Resurgam,"  Mrs. 


160         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  in  "  A  Child's  Grave," 
Emma  Lazarus,  in  her  lyrico-dramatic  "  Dance 
to  Death,"  and  Miss  Woolsey,  in  "  Lohengrin," 
Miss  Osgood,  in  "  Driving  Home  the  Cows,"Miss 
Perry,  in  "  Some  Day  of  Days,"  Miss  Smith,  in 
"  Sometime,"  Miss  Wilcox,  in  "  Solitude,"  Miss 
Bates,  in  "  A  Lament,"  Miss  Clymer,  in  her 
"  Song,"  beginning: 

"  Oh,  trust  me  not  unless  thy  soul 
Can  claim  my  soul  as  thine," 

and  similarly  excellent  specimens  from  the  pens 
of  Miss  Larcom,  Miss  Thomas,  Mrs.  Whitney, 
Miss  Coolbrith,  and  others,  and  a  large  and 
worthy  list  of  similarly  gifted  singers,  are  open 
to  the  study  of  the  lover  of  heartfelt  verse  ex- 
pressed in  finished  form  and  taste.  It  is  only 
when  one  begins  to  select  from  this  list  either  as 
to  names  or  poems  that  he  finds  his  difficulties 
so  increasing  as  to  compel  him  to  refer  the  reader 
to  his  own  intelligent  judgment.  The  marvel  is 
that  Mr.  Stedman  and  Miss  Hutchinson,  in  their 
"  Library  of  American  Literature,"  have  evinced 
such  delicate  wisdom  in  this  regard,  so  as  prac- 
tically to  meet  the  full  purpose  of  their  collection 
and  yet  be  true  to  the  living  and  the  dead.     Dif- 


HARRIET  BEECIIER   STOIVE.  161 

ficult  as  such  a  discrimination  is  with  reference 
to  authors  proper,  it  is  preeminently  so  in  regard 
to  that  large  and  growing  class  of  authoresses 
whose  special  work  and  place  so  often  put  to  the 
extremest  test  the  judgment  of  the  critic. 

There  is  one  American  authoress,  however,  of 
so  representative  a  reputation  that  she  deserves 
at  our  hands  a  separate  study,  in  common  with 
the  names  of  Lowell,  Emerson,  and  Holmes. 
The  gifted  daughter  of  a  gifted  father ;  a  member 
of  a  characteristic  American  family  of  national  re- 
pute, through  the  father  and  sons,  in  the  Amer- 
ican pulpit ;  the  wife  of  a  distinguished  biblical 
scholar  and  teacher;  and  possessed  of  a  nature 
constitutionally  devout  and  earnest,  it  is  but  nat- 
ural that  we  find  her,  both  in  prose  and  verse, 
making  valid  contributions  to  serious  and  sub- 
stantial literature.  Penninginhergirlhood  a  the- 
sis on  "The  Immortality  of  the  Soul,"  this  medita- 
tive spirit  evinced  itself  in  such  prose  produc- 
tions as  "  The  Minister's  Wooing,"  "  Old  Town 
Folks,"  ''Footsteps  of  the  Master,"  "Bible 
Heroines,"  and  "  House  and  Home  Papers," 
to  say  nothing  of  "  Dred,"  and  her  most  notable 
work,  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  begotten  as  it  was 
out  of  her  profound  personal  interest  in  the  suf- 


162         AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

ferings  of  the  oppressed.  Never  has  a  writer 
undertaken  and  prosecuted  literary  work  with  a 
more  devout  desire  to  realize  the  Baconian  ideal, 
"  in  the  glory  of  God  and  the  relief  of  man's 
estate."  But  we  are  writing  of  American  med- 
itative verse,  and  we  turn  at  once  to  Mrs.  Stowe's 
"  Religious  Poems,"  her  one  most  distinctive 
contribution  in  this  direction,  and  signally  indic- 
ative of  her  innermost  religious  spirit.  Though 
embodied  in  a  single  volume  of  but  little  more 
than  one  hundred  pages,  they  are  replete  with 
beauty  and  literary  interest,  especially  signifi- 
cant as  coming  from  the  writer  of  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,"  and  serving  to  confirm  the  same  pro- 
found contemplative  character  that  we  discern  in 
her  most  secular  prose.  The  titles  of  some  of 
the  choicest  of  these  religious  lyrics  are  as  fol- 
lows:  "  St.  Catharine  Borne  by  Angels,"  "The 
Other  World,"  "The  Inner  Voice,"  "Abide  in 
Me  and  I  in  You,"  "  Consolation,"  "  Only  a 
Year,"  "  Hours  of  the  Night,"  with  its  seven  sep- 
arate poems,  and  "  St.  Peter's  Church."  From 
first  to  last  these  poems  are  idyllic,  full  of  the 
tenderest  religious  feeling,  marked,  above  all,  by 
a  pervading  purpose  to  be  of  personal  service 
in  them  to  those  in  need  of  sympathy,  and  re- 


HARRIET  BEECH ER   STOWE.  103 

vealing,  as  nothing  else  she  has  written  does, 
what  her  ideal  of  literature  and  life  has  been  and 
how  efficiently  she  has  realized  it. 

In  the  first  selection  of  the  volume,  "  St.  Cath- 
erine Borne  by  Angels,"  are  some  beautiful 
stanzas : 

"  Slow  through  the  solemn  air,  in  silence  sailing, 
Borne  by  mysterious  angels,  strong  and  fair, 
She  sleeps  at  last,  blest  dreams  her  eyelids  veiling, 
Above  this  weary  world  of  strife  and  care. 

"  So,  o'er  our  hearts  sometimes  the  sweet,  sad  story 

Of  suffering  saints,  borne  homeward,  crowned  and  blest, 
Shines  down  in  stillness  with  a  tender  glory, 
And  makes  a  mirror  there  of  breathless  rest. 

"  For  not  alone  in  those  old  Eastern  regions 

Are  Christ's  beloved  ones  tried  by  cross  and  chain ; 
In  many  a  home  are  His  elect  ones  hidden, 
His  martyrs  suffering  in  their  patient  pain." 

So,  in  the  exquisite  poem  "The  Charmer,"  in 
which  Christ  is  represented  as  the  one  for  whom 
the  pagan  world  was  looking  and  ardently  wait- 
ing: 

"  '  Where  is  that  Charmer  whom  thou  bidst  us  seek? 

On  what  far  shores  may  His  sweet  voice  be  beard? 
When  shall  these  questions  of  our  yearning  souls 
Be  answered  by  the  bright  Eternal  Word?  ' 


164         AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

"  But  years  passed  on;  and  lo!  the  Charmer  came, 
Pure,  simple,  sweet,  as  comes  the  silver  clew, 
And  the  world  knew  Him  not:  He  walked  alone, 
Encircled  only  by  His  trusting  few." 

A  similar  Christian  strain  is  heard  in  "  Only 
a  Year,"  "  The  Old  Psalm  Tune,"  "  The  Other 
World,"  and  "  The  Inner  Voice,"  in  all  of  which 
it  is  difficult  to  tell  which  is  the  more  "impressive, 
the  sweet  and  tender  sentiment  of  the  songs,  or 
the  rich  and  rhythmic  melody  in  which  they  are 
written. 

So,  in  that  inimitable  lyric  of  prayer,  "  Abide 
in  Me  and  I  in  You,"  as  it  opens: 

"  That  mystic  word  of  Thine,  O  sovereign  Lord, 
Is  all  too  pure,  too  high,  too  deep,  for  me ; 
Weary  of  striving,  and  with  longing  faint, 
I  breathe  it  back  again  in  prayer  to  Thee." 

In  her  serial  poem  "  The  Hours  of  the  Night ; 
or,  Watches  of  Sorrow,"  passing  from  "  Mid- 
night," through  the  four  hours  to  "  Day  Dawn," 
and  closing  with  the  poem,  "  When  I  Awake  I 
am  Still  With  Thee,"  consolatory  verse  rises  to 
its  highest  and  purest  level,  as  we  find  it  in  the 
best  hymnology  of  the  Christian  church. 

In  fine,  no  reader  of  American  verse,  on  its 
meditative  side,  can-be  said  to  know  it  fully,  and 


HARRIET  BEECHER   STOWE.  165 

no  student  of  the  life  and  writings  of  Mrs.  Stowe 
can  be  said  to  know  her  fully  and  at  her  best, 
until  he  has  read  these  uplifting  religious  lyrics. 
The}*  remind  us  more  directly  of  the  tender  sen- 
timents of  the  English  Bonar  and  Heber  and  Miss 
Havergal,  and  our  American  Palmer,  and  that 
delicately  sensitive  nature,  the  lamented  Sidney 
Lanier,  than  of  any  others,  and  serve  to  add  to 
Mrs.  Stowe's  reputation  for  intellectual  vigor 
and  creative  literary  genius  the  scarcely  less  im- 
portant qualities  of  sensibility  and  grace  and  ex- 
quisite artistic  taste. 

Nor  does  American  literature  or  any  other 
literature  suffer  by  the  prominent  presence  of 
genuine  feeling  in  its  prose  and  verse.  To  the 
degree  in  which  it  is  genuine,  it  is  healthful  and 
helpful,  serving  to  give  tone  to  thought  to  soften 
what  would  otherwise  be  harsh  and  rough,  and 
to  give  to  authorship  that  gentleness  and  mel- 
lowness that  it  so  often  needs.  Here  lies  the 
mission  of  such  an  order  of  prose  as  that  of  Irv- 
ing, and  here,  especially,  lies  the  mission  of  lyric 
verse  as  distinct  from  the  epic  and  dramatic, 
in  maintaining  what  Disraeli  has  called  "  the 
Amenities  of  literature."  When,  moreover, 
these  lyrics  pass  out  of  the  strictly  secular  into 


1G6         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE    LYRICS. 

the  sphere  of  the  subjective  and  even  the  sacred, 
as  they  do  in  the  verse  of  Mrs.  Stowe,  and,  to  a 
great  degree,  in  that  of  all  the  lyrists  we  have 
studied,  then  does  poetic  expression  rise  to  its 
most  attractive  form,  and  take  its  place,  as  it 
rightly  should,  among  the  most  beneficent  min- 
istries to  men. 


AMERICAN    MEMORIAL    LYRICS:    ELEGIES. 


167 


CHAPTER     ELEVENTH. 

AMERICAN     MEMORIAL     LYRICS: 
ELEGIES. 

Of  the  various  forms  of  meditative  verse,  the 
elegy,  from  its  very  nature  and  purpose,  is  the 
most  distinctively  so.  In  fact,  this  is  its  exclu- 
sive feature.  The  different  classes  of  lyric  poetry 
are  sometimes  viewed  under  the  one  title — odes. 
These  are  heroic  or  epic,  as  seen  in  the  na- 
tional sonnets  of  Wordsworth  and  Milton  ;  hu- 
morous, as  seen  in  Moore  ;  amatory,  as  in  Burns  ; 
pastoral,  as  in  Ramsay  and  Shenstone;  sacred, 
as  seen  in  Christian  hymnology  ;  moral  or  devo- 
tional, as  seen  in  Spenser's  "  Heavenly  Love  " 
and  "  Heavenly  Beauty  "  ;  and  elegiac.  This 
final  form,  as  stated,  is  the  most  specifically  med- 
itative. It  is  sometimes  called  the  Mournful 
Ode,  or  the  Memorial  Ode,  being  specifically 
lyrical  in  that  it  embodies  and  aims  to  express 
169 


170        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

the     deepest    and    tenderest    feelings     of    the 
human  heart;   while  there  are  in  all  prominent 
literatures   many   poems   that  are  not  properly 
called   elegies,   in   which,    however,   the  elegiac 
element  and  spirit  are  so  pronounced  as  to  give 
them  practically  an  elegiac  effect.      Readers  are 
familiar  with   the    standard   elegies    of    British 
letters,    Tennyson's,     In    Memoriam,     Milton's 
"  Lycidas,  "      Shelley's      "  Adonais,  "     Gray's 
"Elegy  Written  in  a  Country  Churchyard,"  and 
Matthew  Arnold's  "  Thyrsis,"  nearly  all  of  which 
could  strictly  be  called  In  Memoriams  or  com- 
memorative   poems,    tributes    to    the    memory 
of  such    cherished    friends   as   Arthur  Hallam, 
Edward  King,  the  poet  Keats,  and  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough.      As  far  back  as  Chaucer's  "  Booke  of 
the  Duchesse,"  a  tribute  to  Lady  Blanche,  and 
Spenser's  "  Astrophel,"  a  tribute  to  Sir  Philip 
Sidney,  we  note  this  memorial  verse,  appearing 
later  in  such  poems  as  Dryden's  "  Heroic  Stan- 
zas "  on  Cromwell,  Wordsworth's  lines,  "  At  the 
Grave    of    Burns,"    and    Landor's    lines,    "  On 
Southey's  Death"  ;   while  many  poems,  such  as 
Milton's  "  II  Penseroso  "  and  Hood's  "  Death- 
bed," have  a  .definitely  marked  elegiac  quality, 
not  to  speak  of  those  numerous  sonnets, scattered 


ELEGIES.  171 

up  and  down  the  pages  of  English  letters,  which 
may  be  said  to  possess  more  of  this  feature  than 
of  any  other. 

In  American  letters  the  same  literary  laws 
obtain,  though  on  a  narrower  scale.  We  note 
the  same  divisions  of  lyric  verse,  the  same  me- 
morial spirit  characterizing  much  of  the  poetry, 
while,  here  and  there,  a  separate  elegy  is  found 
possessed  of  special  idyllic  merit,  and  expressing 
meditative  sentiment  on  the  side  of  grief.  Nat- 
urally, in  such  a  body  of  verse  as  the  American, 
this  particular  type  of  lyric  cannot  be  expected 
to  be  abundant  or  even  singularly  able.  The 
nation  is  as  yet  too  young,  the  range  and  depth 
of  its  experience  too  limited,  the  distinctive  qual- 
ity and  aim  of  its  civilization  too  material,  for 
its  developing  literature  to  express  much  of  this 
subjective  spirit  in  its  verse.  Almost  any  kind 
of  lyric  is  more  in  keeping  with  the  prevailing 
impulses  and  the  environment,  while  it  is  this 
very  fact  that  lends  special  significance  to  any 
such  meditative  poetry  that  does  exist,  and  in- 
sures its  fuller  expression,  as  a  form,  in  the  future 
history  of  the  literature.  Memorial  tributes  are 
found,  as  far  back  as  1657,  in  "  The  Life  and 
Death  of  John  Cotton,"  by  John  Norton  ;  in  1670, 


172         AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

in  "  The  Life  and  Death  of  Richard  Mather,"  by 
Increase  Mather;  in  1678,  in  Norton's  "  Funeral 
Elegy  upon  Anne  Broadstreet  "  ;  in  1685,  in 
Cotton  Mather's  quaint  discourse,  "  An  Elegy 
on  the  Much-to-be-Deplored  Death  of  that 
Never-to-be-Forgotten  Person,  Rev.  Mr.  Na- 
thaniel Collins  "  ;  until,  in  1682,  we  note,  by  Cot- 
ton Mather,  "  A  Poem  to  the  Memory  of  Hiram 
Oakes  "  ;  in  1  7 1 5 ,  "A  Poem  on  the  Death  of 
Joseph  Green,"  by  Nicholas  Noyes ;  in  1727, 
"A  Poem  on  the  Death  of  George  I.,"  by  Mather 
Byles ;  "  An  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  Daniel  Oli- 
ver," in  1732,  by  the  same  author,  one  of  the 
most  prolific  elegiac  poets  of  the  time;  "An 
Elegiac  Poem  on  the  Death  of  George  White- 
field,"  by  PhiliisWheatley  Peters,  in  1 770  ;  and  so 
on,  through  the  eighteenth  century,  in  the  verse 
of  Brackenridge  and  Barlow,  and  closing  with 
Alsop's  "  Monody  on  the  Death  of  Washington," 
in  1800 — a  collection  of  memorial  literature, both 
in  prose  and  verse,  whose  merit  is  in  the  inverse 
ratio  of  its  amount,  whose  enforced  reading- 
might  have  endangered  the  health  of  the  heroes 
it  eulogizes,  and  whose  record  is  important  only 
as  showing  the  continuity  of  literary  growth. 
That     the    editors    of    the    recently    published 


ELEGIES.  173 

"  Library  of  American  Literature  "  patiently  and 
courageously  traversed  this  wide  waste  of  words, 
and  are  still  living  and  in  good  spirits,  is  proof 
positive  of  what  man  and  woman  can  endure. 
Coming  to  the  nineteenth  century,  a  few  of  the  % 
most  notable  of  our  American  elegies  may  be 
cited.  In  the  verse  of  Poe  there  is  a  decided 
elegiac  tone  and  quality.  In  fact,  it  might  be 
said  that,  with  some  rare  exceptions,  as  "  El- 
dorado "  and  "  Eulalie,"  the  poetry  throughout 
is  pitched  in  the  minor  key,  often  breaking  out 
in  a  dirge  or  a  despairing  wail  over  the  woes  of 
earth  and  the  fate  of  man.  Even  of  "  The  Bells  " 
the  two  longest  stanzas  sound  this  dire  note, 
beginning,  respectively : 

"  Hear  the  loud  alarum  bells," 

and 

"  Hear  the  tolling  of  the  bells." 

The  theme  of  his  most  celebrated  poem,  "  The 
Raven, "as  he  tells  us,  is  that  of  "  a  lover  lament- 
ing his  deceased  mistress,"  a  veritable  ele«v, 
with  its  sad  refrain  of  "  nevermore."  So,  in  his 
poems  "  Lenore,"  "The  Colosseum,"  "Annabel 
Lee,"  "  Ulalume,"  and  briefer  selections,  there 
is  the  same  commemorative  tenor  and  spirit  over 
something  or  some  one  lost. 


174         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Turning  to  Bryant,  we  note  such  elegiac  poems 
as  "  Blessed  Are  They  that  Mourn,"  beginning: 

"  Oh,  deem  not  they  are  blest  alone 
Whose  lives  a  peaceful  tenor  keep; 
The  Power  who  pities  man  hath  shown 
A  blessing  for  the  eyes  that  weep." 

So,  his"  Hymn  to  Death,"  "The  Indian  Girl's 
Lament,"  "  Rizpah,2'  "  The  Old  Man's  Funeral," 
"  The  Two  Graves,"  "  The  Living  Lost,"  "  The 
Burial  of  Love,"  and  his  significant  lines  on  "  The 
Death  of  Lincoln  "  : 

"  Oh,  slow  to  smite  and  swift  to  spare, 
Gentle  and  merciful  and  just! 
Who,  in  the  fear  of  God,  didst  bear 
The  sword  of  power,  a  nation's  trust! 

"  In  sorrow  by  thy  bier  we  stand 
Amid  the  awe  that  hushes  all, 
And  speak  the  anguish  of  a  land 
That  shook  with  horror  at  thy  fall. 

"  Thy  task  is  done;  the  bond  are  free; 
We  bear  thee  to  an  honored  grave, 
Whose  proudest  monument  shall  be 
The  broken  fetters  of  the  slave. 

"  Pure  was  thy  life;  its  bloody  close 

Hath  placed  thee  with  the  sons  of  light, 
Among  the  noble  host  of  those 

Who  perished  in  the  cause  of  Right," 


ELEGIES.  175 

This  noble  eulogy  and  elegy  is  fitly  followed  by 
the  poem  "  The  Death  of  Slavery." 

All  readers  have  marked  the  meditative  char- 
acter of  Bryant's  verse,  while  it  is  here  in  place 
to  note  that  this  contemplative  cast  often  ap- 
pears in  the  elegiac  form,  as  best  expressive  of 
the  pensive  habit  of  Bryant's  mind.  The  same 
is  true,  approximately,  of  Emerson,  in  so  far  as 
the  general  character  of  his  verse  is  concerned, 
while  he  has  given  us,  in  two  or  three  instances, 
notable  examples  of  the  elegy  proper,  as  in  his 
"  In  Memoriam,"  written  as  a  tribute  to  his 
brother  Edward,  as  he  sings  in  plaintive  strain  : 

"  There  is  no  record  left  on  earth, 
Save  in  tablets  of  the  heart, 
Of  the  rich  inherent  worth, 

Of  the  grace  that  on  him  shone.1' 

So,  in  his  "  Dirge  "  : 

"  But  they  are  gone — the  holy  ones 

Who  trod  with  me  this  lovely  vale; 
The  strong,  star-bright  companions 
Are  silent,  low,  and  pale." 

It  is  especially  in  his  threnody  over  the 
death  of  his  beloved  and  promising  son  that  he 
unbosoms  his  soul  in  lines  of  tenderest  grief; 


176        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE  LYRICS. 

"  And,  looking  over  the  hills,  I  mourn 
The  darling  who  shall  not  return.   .   .   . 
The  gracious  boy,  who  did  adorn 
The  world  whereunto  he  was  born ; 
I  hearken  for  thy  household  cheer, 
O  eloquent  child!    .    .    . 
The  brook  into  the  stream  runs  on, 
But  the  deep-eyed  boy  is  gone. 
Was  there  no  star  that  could  be  sent, 
No  watcher  in  the  firmament, 
No  angel  from  the  countless  host 
That  borders  round  the  crystal  coast, 
Could  stoop  to  heal  that  only  child, 
Nature's  sweet  marvel  undefiled, 
And  keep  the  blossom  of  the  earth, 
Which  all  her  harvests  were  not  worth? 

0  child  of  Paradise, 

Boy  who  made  dear  his  father's  home, 

In  whose  deep  eyes 

Men  read  the  welfare  of  the  times  to  come, 

1  am  too  much  bereft." 

Thus  the  lines  run  on  in  deep,  pathetic  flow, 
revealing,  as  nothing  else  does  which  Emerson 
has  written,  what  a  large  and  loving  nature  the 
great  man  had,  and  how  little  we  know  of  au- 
thors until  some  bitter  sorrow  has  sanctified  their 
natures  and  opened  up  the  well-springs  of  feel- 
ing and  sympathy  that  hitherto  have  lain  con- 
cealed. Bayard  Taylor,  in  similar  strain,  wrote 
his  elegy  on  the  death  of  his  beloved  wife,  Mary 


ELEGIES.  Ill 

Agnew.  So,  in  Longfellow's  verse,  there  is  a 
decided  elegiac  element,  appearing,  partly,  in 
such  meditative  poems  as  "  The  Reaper  and  the 
Flowers,"  "God's- Acre,"  "  Resignation,"  "  Sus- 
piria,"  and  "  The  Two  Angels,"  and,  also,  in 
specific  examples  of  memorial  poetry,  as  his  lines 
on  "  Charles  Sumner  "  : 

"  Garlands  upon  his  grave 

And  flowers  upon  his  hearse, 
And  to  the  tender  heart  and  brave 
The  tribute  of  this  verse. 

"His  was  the  troubled  life, 
The  conflict  and  the  pain, 
The  grief,  the  bitterness  of  strife, 
The  honor  without  stain.    .    .    . 

"  Were  a  star  quenched  on  high, 
For  ages  would  its  light, 
Still  traveling  downward  from  the  sky, 
Shine  on  our  mortal  sight. 

"  So,  when  a  great  man  dies, 
For  years  beyond  our  ken 
The  light  he  leaves  behind  him  lies 
Upon  the  paths  of  men." 

So  that'  beautiful  and  touching  elegy  entitled 
"  Three  Friends  of  Mine,"  beginning: 

"  When  I  remember  them,  those  friends  of  mine, 
Who  are  no  longer  here,  the  noble  three 
Who  half  my  life  were  more  than  friends  to  me, 
And  whose  discourse  was  like  a  generous  wine." 


178         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

So,  most  of  all,  in  his  "  Morituri  Salutamus,"  a 
poem  from  which  no  one  line  can  be  spared, 
filled  to  the  full  with  tender  lyric  richness,  re- 
plete with  thought  and  love  and  faith  and  hope, 
the  inimitable  model  of  all  modern  elegies,  a 
poem  sufficient  in  itself  to  have  made  the  name 
of  Longfellow  great  and  dear  for  all  time. 

Turning  to  Whittier,  the  poet  of  trust  and 
cheer  and  simple,  homely  life,  we  find  his  pages 
full  of  idyllic  charm,  characteristically  reflec- 
tive, and  often  marked  by  deep  elegiac  feeling. 
Such  poems  are  "  The  Female  Martyr,"  <:  Tell- 
ing the  Bees,"  "  The  Swan  Song  of  Parson 
Avery,"  his  tributes  to  Toussaint  l'Ouver- 
ture,  to  Garrison,  Channing,  Wordsworth, 
Burns,  and  others.  His  poem  "  Ichabod,"  an 
elegy  on  the  lost  reputation  of  Webster  by 
reason  of  his  compromising  attitude  toward  the 
fugitive-slave  law,  is  one  of  painful  interest,  as 
he  writes : 

"  So  fallen!  so  lost!  the  light  withdrawn 
Which  once  he  wore! 
The  glory  from  his  gray  hairs  gone 
Forevermore!" 

In  "  The  Lost  Occasion,"  written  thirty  years 
later,  he  continues  the  elegiac  lament  over  the 


ELEGIES.  179 

fallen  hero  in  that  he  did  not  live  to  see  the  final 
triumph  of  justice  in  the  outcome  of  the  Civil. 
War,  the  emancipation  of  the  slave. 

One  of  the  four  volumes  of  Whittier's  most 
recently  published  verse  is  entitled  "  Poems 
Reminiscent  and  Religious."  This  is  but  an- 
other name  for  meditative  verse,  in  which  the 
elegiac  feature  is  also  prominent,  as  in  "  Mem- 
ories," a  sweet  testimonial  to  a  "  beautiful  and 
happy  girl  "  of  his  youth,  and  in  "  My  Trust," 
touching  lines  to  the  memory  of  his  mother : 

"  A  picture  memory  brings  to  me: 
I  look  across  the  years  to  see 
Myself  beside  my  mother's  knee; 
•  I  wait  in  His  good  time  to  see 

That,  as  my  mother  dealt  with  me, 
So  with  His  children  dealeth  He." 

In  such  poems  as  "  At  Last,"  "  What  the  Trav- 
eler Said  at  Sunset,"  and  "The  Light  that  is 
Felt,"  who  can  discern  the  dividing  line  between 
the  contemplative  and  the  prophetic,  as,  with  his 
eye  both  on  earth  and  heaven,  he  is  rapidly 
preparing  for  the  peace  of  God  that  just  awaits 
him,  and  has  already  been  granted  him  ! 

Turning  to  the  poetry  of  Lowell,  it  is  signifi- 
cant to  note  that  it  opens  with  his  "  Threnodia  "  : 


180         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

"  Gone,  gone  from  us!  and  shall  we  see 
Those  sibyl-leaves  of  destiny, 
Those  calm  eyes,  nevermore?  " 

Of  a  similar  spirit  is  his  sonnet  "  To  the  Spirit 
of  Keats,"  and  his  tender  poem  "  On  the  Death 
of  a  Friend's  Child,"  in  which  we  read  the  sug- 
gestive lines : 

"  'Tis  sorrow  builds  the  shining  ladder  up, 
Whose  golden  rounds  are  our  calamities, 
Whereon  our  firm  feet  planting,  nearer  God 
The  spirit  climbs,  and  hath  its  eyes  unsealed. 
True  is  it  that  Death's  face  seems  stern  and  cold, 
When  he  is  sent  to  summon  those  we  love; 
But  all  God's  angels  come  tb  us  disguised: 
Sorrow  and  sickness,  poverty  and  death, 
One  after  other  lift  their  frowning  masks,      • 
And  we  behold  the  seraph's  face  beneath, 
All  radiant  with  the  glory  and  the  calm 
Of  having  looked  upon  the  front  of  God." 

So,  his  poems  "  She  Came  and  Went "  and 
"  The  Changeling,"  his  memorial  verses  to 
Kossuth,  Garrison,  Charming,  Hood,  and  others, 
"  Auf  Wiedersehen,"  "After  the  Burial,"  and 
"The  First  Snowfall,"  in  which  he  sings  of  his 
lost  child  : 

"  I  thought  of  a  mound  in  sweet  Auburn, 
Where  a  little  headstone  stood." 


ELEGIES.  181 

His  three  notable  memorial  poems,  "  The 
Fight  at  Concord  Bridge,"  "  Under  the  Old 
Elm,"  and  "An  Ode  for  the  Fourth  of  July,"  are 
national  in  character  and  purpose,  though  remi- 
niscent and  reflective.  Thus,  from  first  to  last, 
through  the  record  of  our  American  verse  this 
meditative  and  memorial  strain  is  heard,  some- 
times in  the  quiet  and  subdued  notes  of  contem- 
plation, and  often  in  the  deep  and  passionate  cry 
of  sorrow  over  the  irreparable  losses  of  earth. 
Moreover,  it  may  be  said  that,  with  the  single 
exception  of  the  hopeless  key  to  which  the  verse 
of  Poe  is  tuned,  these  poetic  sentiments  are  hal- 
lowed and  glorified  by  the  presence  of  Christian 
hope  and  trust.  Even  in  so  rollicking  and  hu- 
morous a  poet  as  Holmes,  rare  examples  of  the 
reflective  and  commemorative  are  found,  while 
in  such  poets  as  Willis  and  the  sisters  Cary  and 
Mrs.  Stowe  the  secular  passes  into  the  scriptural 
and  spiritual,  and  the  contemplative  into  the  de- 
votional and  religious ;  eulogy  and  elegy  com- 
bine, and  the  final  effect  of  the  verse,  as  a  whole, 
is  to  ennoble  and  subdue  the  hearts  of  those  who 
read  it  with  anything  like  an  appreciative  sym- 
pathy. 


AMERICAN    DEVOTIONAL   LYRICS:    HYMNS. 


183 


CHAPTER    TWELFTH. 

AMERICAN    DEVOTIONAL    LYRICS: 
HYMNS. 

ACCORDING  to  that  division  of  lyric  verse  by 
which  all  its  forms  are  included  under  the  one 
title  of  odes,  the  most  natural  and  complete 
classification  of  the  odes  would  be  that  of  secular 
and  sacred,  this  last  order  being  divisible  into 
inspired  or  biblical,  religious  or  spiritual,  and 
moral  or  ethical.  It  is  in  this  second  collection 
of  odes,  the  religious,  that  the  hymns  of  the 
Christian  church  belong,  midway  between  the 
inspired  productions  of  Hebrew  verse  and  the 
ethical  poems  of  Wordsworth  and  Spenser  and 
kindred  authors.  Each  of  these  orders  is  dis- 
tinctly meditative,  while  it  is  reserved  for  reli- 
gious odes,  as  expressed  in  hymns,  to  embody 
this  refiective  element  in  some  of  the  most  de- 
vout and  impressive  forms  known  to  literature. 
185 


186         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Moreover,  it  may  be  said  that  American  hym- 
nology,  as  distinct  from  British,  has  had  an  in- 
creasingly creditable  history  from  the  beginning. 
This  history  opens,  in  1640,  with  the  publication 
of  the  now  celebrated  "  Bay  Psalm-book,"  be- 
lieved, on  good  authority,  to  have  been  the  first 
book  printed  in  America,  by  the  first  printing- 
press  in  America,  in  Cambridge,  in  the  house 
of  Rev.  Henry  Dunster,  the  first  president  of 
Harvard,  who  was  chosen  afterward  to  issue  the 
version  in  a  revised  and  more  acceptable  form. 
As  the  title  indicates,  it  was  exclusively  a  psalter, 
"  the  whole  Book  of  Psalms  faithfully  translated 
into  English  meter."  Then  followed  various  col- 
lections, such  as  that  of  Sternhold  and  Hopkins, 
1693  ;  of  Tate  and  Brady,  1  741  ;  Watts's  Hymns, 
1 741;  Nettleton's  "Village  Hymns,"  1824; 
"  Songs  by  the  Way,"  1824,  by  Bishop  Doane ; 
Bishop  Coxe's  "Christian  Ballads,"  1840; 
Hastings's  "Devotional  Hymns,"  18 15  ;  Palmer's 
"Hymns  and  Sacred  Pieces,"  1865  ;  Mrs.  Stowe's 
"Religious  Poems,"  1 867  ;  Phcebe  Cary's  "Poems 
of  Faith,  Hope,  and  Love,"  1868.  The  list  of 
what  may  be  called  denominational  hymnals  is 
well-nigh  limitless,  and  need  not  here  be  cited. 
A  question  of  special  interest  arises  here  as 


HYMNS.  187 

to  our  American  hymnists,  who  they  are,  in  the 
main,  and  what  classes  of  the  community  they 
mainly  represent.  The  large  majority  of  them 
belong  to  the  clergy,  with  a  goodly  number  from 
our  distinctively  literary  men  and  women,  au- 
thors by  profession. 

As  to  the  first  of  these  orders,  the  clergy,  one 
is  impressed  by  their  prominence  along  this  line 
if  he  will  turn  to  the  index  of  names  in  such 
a  compilation  as  Duffield's  "  English  Hymns," 
in  which  we  have  a  list  given  us  of  our  American 
hymn- writers  from  1640  to  1850.  So  conspic- 
uous is  the  abbreviation  "Rev."  in  these  col- 
umns that  it  first  catches  the  eye  and  commands 
the  attention.  Beginning  with  the  "  Bay  Psalm- 
book,"  its  three  editors,  Welde,  Richard  Mather, 
and  Eliot,  "the  apostle  to  the  Indians,"  were 
clergymen.  Following  the  list  as  it  runs,  we 
note  the  names  of  Cotton  Mather,  Nettleton, 
Judson,  Leonard,  Bacon,  James  Waddell  Alex- 
ander, Bethune,  Hedge,  Hatfield,  Palmer,  Jo- 
seph Addison  Alexander,  Robinson,  and  others. 
Of  bishops  there  is  a  notable  list,  as  seen  in 
Onderdonk,  Whittingham,  Bergen,  Coxe,  Hunt- 
ington, and  Doane.  Not  a  few  of  these  devo- 
tional authors  have  been  college  presidents,  as 


188        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Dunster  of  Harvard,  Davies  of  Princeton,  "  the 
earliest  American  hymnist,  "  and  Timothy 
D wight  of  Yale,  one  of  the  revisers  of  Watts's 
collection.  In  this  worthy  work  the  Unitarian 
church  has  had  a  large  and  useful  place,  as  seen 
in  the  hymns  of  Clarke  and  Hedge,  Furness, 
Ware,  Higginson,  and  Samuel  Longfellow.  In 
fine,  American  hymnology,  as  a  species  of  medi- 
tative verse,  has  had  from  the  outset  this  ministe- 
rial origin  and  impress,  nor  is  it  at  all  unnatural. 
Just  because  these  lyrics  are  semi-scriptural  and 
religious,  born  out  of  a  definite  Christian  expe- 
rience, and  written  on  behalf  of  character  and 
personal  piety,  are  they  germane  to  clerical  habit, 
thought,  and  purpose.  Who  knows,  indeed,  but 
that  in  some  instances  more  decided  Christian 
results  have  been  reached  by  some  of  the  hymns 
of  these  preachers  and  teachers  than  by  all  the 
sermons  and  lectures  they  have  delivered!  while 
the  history  of  our  hymnology  is  thus  happily 
connected  with  that  of  the  American  church  and 
the  American  college.  What  better  work  did 
President  Dunster  ever  do  than  to  put  the  "  Bay 
Psalm-book  "  into  such  form  as  to  make  it  the 
acceptable  version  throughout  the  colonial  era ! 
The   fact  that  Dwight's  revision  of  Watts  was 


HYMNS,  189 

adopted  not  only  by  Congregationalists,  but 
by  the  Presbyterian  General  Assembly  of  1800, 
clearly  shows  its  value.  Who  can  compute  the 
sacred  influence  of  Muhlenberg's  "  I  would  not 
live  alway,"  or  of  Bethune's  "  It  is  not  death 
to  die,"  or  of  any  one  of  a  score  of  Ray  Palmer's 
religious  lyrics  that  might  be  cited ! 

How  much  hvmnal  theolo^v  there  is  in  the 
Christian  church  ;  substantial,  evangelical  doc- 
trine,  presented  through  the  medium  of  the  de- 
vout and  tender  lyric,  and  thus  all  the  more 
designed  to  reach  the  head  through  the  heart ! 
All  bigotry  and  even  denominational  difference 
vanishes  under  the  hallowed  and  fusing  influence 
of  these  sacred  songs.  The  debates  and  nice 
distinctions  of  the  schools  of  divinity  disappear 
when  the  people  of  God  in  the  unity  and  com- 
munity of  a  simple  faith  come  together  in  a  ser- 
vice of  song  to  unbosom  the  deepest  yearnings 
of  the  human  heart.  All  Protestants  are  then 
one  great  religious  order,  while  even  Protestants 
and  Romanists  may  find  common  ground  in  the 
great  Latin  hymns  of  the  older  church.  We  have 
yet  to  learn  what  a  safe  guide  the  heart  is,  after 
all,  in  matters  of  faith  and  Christian  doctrine. 

The  second  class  of  prominence  in  the  pro- 


190         AM  ERICA  X  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

duction  of  our  hymns  we  find  in  our  specifically 
literary  men  and  women  as  a  distinct  order, 
writers  by  profession  and  preference,  the  stand- 
ard names  in  American  letters.  To  many  of 
these  as  hymnists  reference  has  already  been 
made — to  Whittier,  Holmes,  and  Mrs.  Stowe. 
An  early  and  most  fitting  illustration  of  this 
type  of  lyrist  is  William  Cullen  Bryant,  the  au- 
thor of  no  less  than  twenty  hymns,  such  as  "  O 
Thou  whose  love  can  ne'er  forget,"  "  Deem 
not  that  they  are  blessed  alone,"  "  All  praise 
to  Him  of  Nazareth,"  "  Go  forth,  O  word  of 
Christ,  go  forth,"  and  the  characteristic  dedi- 
catory quatrain : 

"  0  Thou  whose  own  vast  temple  stands, 
Built  over  earth  and  sea, 
Accept  the  walls  that  human  hands 
Have  raised  to  worship  Thee." 

So,  from  Mrs.  Sigourney,  the  hymn  "  Onward, 
onward,  men  of  heaven" ;  from  Phoebe  Cary, 
the  lines,  "  One  sweetly  solemn  thought"  and 
the  lyric  "  Nearer  Home,"  and,  from  her  sister, 
Alice,  various  lines  of  similar  spirit. 

As  mentioned  in  discussing  the  meditative 
verse  of  such  poets  as  Emerson,  Longfellow,  and 
Lowell,   the    dividing    line    between    the    moral 


HYMNS.  191 

poem,  so-called,  and  the  religious  poem  or  hymn 
is  so  delicate  as  scarcely  to  be  discernible.  Nor 
is  the  emphasis  here  to  be  laid,  as  to  the  work 
of  our  best  authors  in  the  line  of  hymnology,  on 
the  amount  of  such  verse  that  they  have  com- 
posed. This,  as  compared  with  that  of  the  clergy, 
is  limited  indeed.  The  fact  of  interest  is  that 
our  standard  authors  should  have  written  any 
poems  of  this  specific  order,  evincing  thus  the 
best  features  of  their  personal  characters,  their 
sympathy  with  the  existence  and  mission  of  the 
Christian  church,  and  their  effort  to  minimize, 
as  far  as  possible,  the  distance  in  American  verse 
between  the  secular  and  the  sacred. 

Here  again,  however,  the  production  of  such 
a  species  of  verse  by  standard  secular  writers  is 
not  unnatural,  in  that  poetry,  in  its  best  forms, 
is  the  most  fitting  expression  of  the  deeper  and 
finer  sensibilities,  of  hope  and  love  and  joy  and 
trust,  the  utterance  of  genuine  feeling,  cultivated 
taste,  and  of  imagination  in  its  loftiest  and  purest 
exercise.  As  in  British  letters  the  sacred  verse 
of  Milton,  Addison,  Pope,  and  Cowper  is  a  nor- 
mal form  of  poetic  utterance,  so,  when  our  rep- 
resentative American  poets  enter  the  domain  of 
the  religious  lyric,  they  but  add  another  evidence 


192         AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE  LYRICS. 

of  their  genuine  gift  and  mission  as  poets.  In 
this  high  sense,  a  hymn  from  Holmes  or  Whit- 
tier  is  as  appropriate  as  when  it  comes  from  the 
pen  of  Hastings  or  Palmer.  Just  here  it  is  in 
place  to  state  that,  as  we  have  in  English  and 
classical  literature  debates  and  orations  that  were 
never  pronounced  in  public,  so  may  we  expect 
to  find,  and  do  find,  some  of  these  sacred  lyrics 
which  have  been  composed  with  no  reference 
whatever  to  their  use  in  the  exercises  of  Christian 
worship,  but  simply  as  one  of  the  types  in  which 
poetic  genius  embodies  itself,  composed  as  liter- 
ature, and  not  specifically  as  religious  literature. 
Thus  Whittier  wrote  his  lyrics  "  The  Eternal 
Goodness  "  and  "  Our  Master,"  which,  though 
not  written  as  hymns,  may  be  so  used  if  need 
be.  Thus  Holmes  and  Bryant  and  Lowell  wrote 
reflective  verse  as  verse,  but  so  imbued  with 
moral  and  spiritual  life  as  to  make  it  serviceable 
in  the  rites  of  the  church.  In  this  way,  what 
Brookes  calls  "the  theology  of  the  English  poets" 
has  been  made  an  essential  and  attractive  part 
of  English  literature. 

So,  on  the  other  hand,  hymns  as  such  should 
possess  some  distinctive  literary  character, 
should  have  an   artistic  as  well  as  a  religious 


HYMNS.  193 

quality,  and  should  be  in  good  taste  from  an  es- 
thetic point  of  view,  so  as  to  commend  themselves 
to  all  students  of  form  and  lovers  of  literary  art. 
The  violation  of  this  principle  is  far  too  frequent, 
so  frequent  as  to  have  brought  the  whole  de- 
partment of  hymnology  into  peril  at  the  hands 
of  literary  critics.  The  mere  fact  that  such  lyrics 
are  composed  for  the  service  of  the  church  and 
the  needs  of  the  common  people  does  not,  in 
their  judgment,  justify  the  absence  of  definite 
artistic  excellence.  Readers  of  taste  are  often 
pained  by  these  unliterary  and  non-literary  ef- 
fusions that  are  found  in  our  collections  and  pass 
for  sacred  poetry.  In  no  sense  known  to  criti- 
cism can  they  be  called  poetry,  and  should  not 
as  such  be  imposed  upon  the  acceptance  of  wor- 
shipers. It  is,  indeed,  because  of  the  presumable 
literary  ignorance  of  the  people  as  a  whole  that 
they  are  thus  imposed,  devoid  as  they  are  both 
of  the  structure  and  spirit  of  genuine  verse,  ill- 
conceived  and  ill-expressed,  and  worthy  of  the 
name  of  verse  only  in  the  sense  that  the  lines 
are  metrical.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  much  of 
the  hymnology  in  use  by  the  modern  lay  evan- 
gelist is  greatly  at  fault  in  this  particular,  a  mere 
jingle  and  doggerel  and  trick  of  words,  as  illiter- 


194         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

ate  and  unpoetic  as  verse  could  well  be  and  be 
verse  at  all.  It  cannot  be  wondered  at  that  such 
an  order  of  sacred  song  should  offend  the  cul- 
tivated taste  of  literary  men,  and  estrange  them 
permanently  from  the  ordinances  of  the  church. 
The  comparison  of  these  productions  with 
such  a  lyric  as  Milton's  ode  "  On  the  Morning 
of  Christ's  Nativity,"  or  Heber's  "Epiphany 
Hymn,"  or  the  sacred  oratorios  of  Handel  and 
Mendelssohn,  will  indicate  the  difference  be- 
tween unliterary  and  literary  hymnology. 

Outside  the  two  classes  of  hymnists  men- 
tioned, the  clergy  and  the  literati,  it  is  interesting 
to  note  the  origin  of  some  of  our  religious  poems 
from  other  sources,  professional  and  non-profes- 
sional— some  of  them,  indeed,  from  obscure 
and  unknown  sources.  President  John  Quincy 
Adams  composed  a- number  of  hymns,  as  found 
in  Lunt's  "  Christian  Psalter."  Dr.  Abraham 
Coles,  in  his  admirable  version  of  "  Dies  Irae," 
has  worked  along  the  same  lyric  line.  Examples 
of  hymns  whose  authors  are  but  little  known  are 
seen  in  such  opening  lines  as 

"  Oh,  could  I  find  from  day  to  day 
A  nearness  to  my  God!" 

written  by  Benjamin  Cleveland ; 


//yj/A'S.  195 

"  There  is  an  hour  of  peaceful  rest," 

by  Tappan ; 

"  I  love  to  steal  awhile  away," 

by  Mrs.  Brown  ; 

"  Humbly  before  Thine  awful  throne," 

by  Hillhouse ;  and  others  of  equal  excellence 
by  equally  unknown  authors,  the  same  principle 
beino-  even  more  largely  illustrated  in  British 
verse.  The  beautiful  patriotic  lyric  "  God  bless 
our  native  land,"  so  finely  combining  Chris- 
tian truth  and  national  good, and  written  by  John 
S.  Dwiffht,  son  of  President  Dwight,  is  none  the 
less  excellent  because  the  reputation  of  the  son 
was  overshadowed  by  that  of  the  father.  The 
enjoyment  of  such  literary  work  as  "The  Let- 
ters of  Junius  "  or  "  The  Imitation  of  Christ  "  is 
not  dependent  upon  the  settlement  of  the  dis- 
puted question  of  their  authorship. 

A  closing  thought  is  in  place,  drawn  from  the 
Greek  etymology  of  our  word  "  hymn,"  from 
untnoSy  "a  song,"  "a  festive  poem."  The  idea 
of  cheerful  praise  is  a  prominent  one  in  the 
root  meaning,  as  also  in  that  of  "  psalm,"  and,  in 
the  Christian  sense,  cannot  be  too  pronounced. 
Meditative  verse,  as  embodied  in  hymns,  need 


196        AM  ERIC  AX  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

not  thereby  be  unduly  sedate,  and,  least  of  all, 
mournful  and  morose,  but  find  its  best  and 
most  natural  expression  in  happy,  hopeful  senti- 
ment. Memorial  hymns  there  must  be,  hymns 
adapted  to  times  of  trial  and  struggle,  penitential 
hymns,  hymns  of  humiliation  and  spiritual  mis- 
giving, hymns  of  consecration,  and  such  as  set 
forth  in  poetic  form  the  cardinal  doctrines  of  the 
church.  These  have  their  place,  but  a  compar- 
atively limited  place,  in  any  properly  conducted 
Christian  anthology.  Etymologicahy  and  spir- 
itually, the  prime  purpose  of  the  hymn  and  psalm 
is  praise,  as  uttering  the  various  emotions  of 
gratitude  and  hope  and  joy  and  adoration — 
praise  for  common  and  special  mercies,  praise 
for  divine  grace  in  all  its  manifold  ministries  to 
the  -soul,  the  very  word  "  praise  "  radically  de- 
noting the  payment  of  a  tribute  to  the  source  of 
blessing.  Hence  the  fitness  of  the  Hallelujahs 
of  our  Christian  hymnology  :  "  Praise  ye  Jeho- 
vah "  is  the  appropriate  refrain  of  the  religious 
lyric.  Wisely,  indeed,  was  good  Bishop  Ken 
guided  by  the  grace  of  God  and  his  own  poetic 
genius  when  he  thus  gave  us  the  "  Te  Deum 
Laudamus  "  of  the  Protestant  church  in  his  in- 
spired doxology  : 

"  Praise  God,  from  whom  all  blessings  flow." 


SOME  LATER  LYRISTS. 


197 


CHAPTER  THIRTEENTH. 

SOME    LATER    LYRISTS. 

WHEN  we  pass  from  the  earlier  representa- 
tive poetry  of  America  to  the  subsequent  and 
closing  decades  of  the  century,  we  pass  by  no 
means  from  lyric  verse  of  a  high  order  of  merit 
to  that  of  mediocrity.  The  great  writers  of 
idyllic  song  have  gone,  in  the  death  of  Whittier 
and  Lowell  and  their  inimitable  fellow-craftsmen, 
and  yet  the  volume  of  such  verse  is  ever  enlar- 
ging before  us, while, here  and  there,  in  "the  choir 
at  large,"  is  heard  a  voice  that  seems  to  have 
caught  somewhat  of  the  art  of  the  older  bards, 
so  that  we  are  led  to  hope  that  the  day  of  poetic 
power  has  not  altogether  passed  away.  It  is  as 
satisfactory  as  it  is  surprising  and  even  anoma- 
lous to  note  that  a  nation  as  young  as  ours,  and 
as  commercial  in  its  instincts  and  ambitions, 
should  exhibit,  from  age  to  age  through  its 
199 


200         AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

literary    history,  so  pronounced  a  development 
along  the  lines  of  lyric  expression,  and,  most  of 
all,  on  its  contemplative  side.      Rich  as  our  an- 
thology is,  and,  naturally  so,  in  lyrics  of  adven- 
ture and  civic  interest,  of  bold  and  martial  ardor 
and  of  passionate   outbursts  on  the  rights  and 
the  wrongs  of  man,  it  is  far  richer  in  that  sub- 
dued and  more  subjective  order  of  ode  and  son- 
net to  which  these  pages  have  referred.      Even 
close   upon   the    ending   of  the   Civil   War  this 
meditative  type   asserted  its  presence,  and  pa- 
triotic devotion   embodied  its  feeling  as  much 
in  the  quiet  expression   of  national  losses  and 
trials  as  in  the  more  demonstrative  expression 
of  national  triumph.      The  verses  of  our  poets 
at  the  completion   of  our  first  century  as  a  re- 
public are  marked  by  the  same  reflective  com- 
ment on  the  past  and   present  of  the  nation's 
history,  while  the  ever-increasing  tide  of  mate- 
rialism in  philosophy  and  trade  has  not,  as  yet, 
been  able  to  quench,   in  any   valid  sense,  this 
steady  expression  of  the  sentiments  of  the  heart. 
A  passing  reference  to  some  of  these  later  and 
living  lyric  bards  is  all  that  can  be  attempted, 
the  name  of  Sidney  Lanier  recalling  a  life  whose 
end  seemed  to  be  so  untimely,  and  whose  rich 


SOME   LATER   LYRISTS.  201 

introspective  verse  was  so  full  of  poetic  promise. 
John  James  Piatt,  in  his  "  Idyls  and  Lyrics  of 
the  Ohio  Valley  "  and  "  Poems  of  House  and 
Home,"  is  a  name  to  be  remembered,  such  poems 
as  "  The  Morning  Street,"  "A  Lost  Graveyard," 
"Apart,"  and  "  Leaves  at  My  Window,"  indicat- 
ing the  reflective  quality.  William  Winter,  in  his 
lines  on  "  An  Empty  Heart  "  and  "  Constance," 
strikes  the  same  minor  key,  especially  touching 
in  the  tribute  to  Poe : 

"  He  was  the  voice  of  beauty  and  of  woe, 

Passion  and  mystery  and  the  dread  unknown  ; 

Pure  as  the  mountains  of  perpetual  snow, 

Cold  as  the  icy  winds  that  round  them  moan, 

Dark  as  the  cave  wherein  earth's  thunders  groan, 
Wild  as  the  tempests  of  the  upper  sky, 

Sweet  as  the  faint,  far-off  celestial  tone 

Of  angel  whispers,  fluttering  from  on  high, 

And  tender  as  love's  tears  when  youth  and  beauty  die." 

Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  in  his  verse  through- 
out, reveals  a  high  order  of  genius  along  this 
special  idyllic  line,  so  that  one  is  in  serious  doubt 
as  to  what  selections  to  emphasize  among  such  as 
"  Flower  and  Thorn,"  "  An  Untimely  Thought," 
"An  Old  Castle,"  "Prescience,"  and  "Sleep," 
this  last  sonnet  reading  thus  sweetly  : 


202         AM  ERIC  AX   MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

'*  When  to  soft  sleep  we  give  ourselves  away, 
And  in  a  dream,  as  in  a  fairy  bark, 
Drift  on  and  on  through  the  enchanted  dark 
To  purple  daybreak,  little  thought  we  pay 
To  that  sweet,  better  world  we  know  by  day; 
We  are  clean  quit  of  it,  as  is  a  lark 
So  high  in  heaven  no  human  eye  can  mark 
The  thin,  swift  pinion  cleaving  through  the  gray. 
Till  we  awake  ill  fate  can  do  no  ill, 
The  resting  heart  shall  not  take  up  again 
The  heavy  load  that  yet  must  make  it  bleed  ; 
For  this  brief  space  the  loud  world's  voice  is  still, 
No  faintest  echo  of  it  brings  us  pain. 
How  will  it  be  when  we  shall  sleep  indeed?  " 


This  is  the  very  perfection  of  lyric  verse  in  its 
more  subdued  and  gentle  forms,  where  thought 
and  feeling  and  taste  and  rhythmic  art  so  com- 
bine as  to  leave  nothing  wanting  in  the  final 
impression  of  the  poem. 

So,  Howells  and  Maurice  Thompson,  Richard 
Henry  Stoddard,  Boner,  and  Cheney,  in  his  "A 
Saint  of  Yore,"  have  done  noteworthy  work  as 
poets  in  meditative  miscellany.  R.  W.  Gilder, 
in  "  The  New  Day  "  and  other  collections,  has 
given  us  some  of  the  most  exquisite  verse  of  the 
time  in  such  examples  as  "The  Celestial  Passion," 
"  A  Christmas  Hymn,"  and  "  Sonnet,"  while 
the    masterly    American    critic,    Stedman,    has 


SOME   LATER   LYRISTS.  '203 

added  to  all  his  other  estimable  work  his  "  Lyrics 
and  Idyls,"  so  marked  by  classical  correctness 
and  genuine  poetic  sentiment. 

No  one  of  our  living  lyrists  has  done  more  rep- 
resentative work  along  these  special  lines  than 
has  Mr.  Stedman.  We  have  but  to  glance  down 
the  list  of  his  themes  in  verse  to  note  the  emphatic 
presence  of  this  chaste  idyllic  quality  on  the 
side  of  reflection.  Such  are  the  poems  "  Too 
Late,"  "The  Protest  of  Faith,"  "Hope  De- 
ferred," "  A  Mother's  Picture,"  "  The  Old 
Love  and  the  New,"  "  At  Twilight,"  "  Dark- 
ness and  Shadow,"  "  The  Sad  Bridal,"  and 
"  The  Ordeal  by  Fire,"  which  last  poem,  had  we 
space,  might  be  quoted  in  its  entirety  as  illus- 
trative of  a  profound  and  tender  meditative- 
ness.  His  justly  celebrated  "  Dartmouth  Ode," 
in  its  ten  separate  sections,  is  full  of  this  quiet 
charm  of  spirit  and  manner,  as  he  recounts  the 
trials  and  triumphs,  the  hopes  and  disappoint- 
ments, of  youth.  Thus,  in  the  sixth  section, 
"  Youth  and  Age,"  he  sings  in  sweet  and  sober 
strain : 

"  How  slow,  how  sure,  how  swift 
The  sands  within  each  glass  ; 
The  brief,  illusive  moments  pass  ; 
Half  unawares  we  mark  their  drift, 


204        AMERICAN  MEDITATIVE   LYRICS. 

Till  the  awakened  heart  cries  out,  'Alas, 

Alas!  the  fair  occasion  fled, 

The  precious  chance  to  action  all  unused!  ' 

And  murmurs  in  its  depths  the  old  refrain, 

'  Had  we  but  known  betimes  what  now  we  know  in  vain! '  " 

So,   in   the    beautiful   reverie   "  The   Undiscov- 
ered Country  "  : 

"  Could  we  but  know 
The  land  that  ends  our  dark,  uncertain  travel, 
Where  lie  those  happier  hills  and  meadows  low, — 
Ah,  if  beyond  the  spirit's  inmost  cavil, 
Aught  of  that  country  could  we  surely  know, 
Who  would  not  go!" 

Here  is  heard  the  voice  of  one  of  the  new- 
masters,  if  not  of  the  old — a  clear,  hopeful,  and 
an  inspiring  voice  ;  and  he  who  heeds  it  and  fol- 
lows it  will  rise  at  once  to  noble  endeavor  and 
wider  outlook. 

So  have  our  departed  lyrists  sung,  and  so  are 
singing  those  who  still  are  among  us ;  while  the 
poverty  of  American  letters  in  epic  and  dra- 
matic verse  finds  its  partial  compensation  in  this 
wealth  of  reflective  lyric  product. 

In  fine,  no  literature  of  note  has  a  richer  rec- 
ord of  lyric  verse  within  the  compass  of  a  cen- 
tury, while  no  element  of  our  developing  poetic 


SOME   LATER   LYRISTS.  205 

life  is  fuller  of  promise  than  this  as  to  the  ex- 
cellence and  permanence  of  our  literary  work. 
American  literature  has  few  great  poets  and 
few  great  poems.  It  has,  however,  a  large 
amount  of  poetry  that  is  thoroughly  good — 
characterized  by  faith  in  God  and  faith  in  man, 
by  faith  in  truth  and  right  and  love  and  spirit- 
ual law,  and  ministrant  thereby  to  human  life  in 
its  daily  and  deepest  needs. 


